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1836 
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SEE* C0NGREss 

WWII 



HD 197 
1836 
Copy 1 



SPEECH 



MR. CUSHING, OF 3IASSACHLSBTTS, 



THE RESOLUTIONS 



KENTUCKY AND MASSACHUSETTS 



RECOMMENDING THE DISTIU BfTlOX OF THE 



PROCEEDS OF THE PUBLIC LAN 



AMONG THE STATES 



HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES; MAY 23, 1836. 




WASHINGTON! 

rUlXTEH F.T GAT, S & SEATON. 

1836. 



' r V 






\ 






SPEECH. 



Mr. GUSHING said:— 

The resolutions of the Legislature of Kentucky recommend the dis- 
tribution of the proceeds of the public, lands among the several States, 
in the ratio of their federal numbers; and the question pending is on 
the motioivjof the gentleman from Kentucky, (Mr. C. Allan,) which 
instructs the Committee of Ways and Means to bring in a bill in con- 
formity with those resolutions. 

The Legislature of Massachusetts, also, has expressed its opinion 
of this matter. I hold in my hand an authentic copy of resolutions adopt- 
ed by the General Court of that State, approving the principles of the bill 
now before Congress for the distribution of the proceeds of the public 
lands of the United States among the several States of the Union, and 
requesting her representatives in Congress to use their exertions to 
procure the passage of that bill. 

These resolutions do not come to my colleagues or to myself in the 
shape of authoritative command. They do not emanate from the con- 
stituent People, whose instructions the Constitution of my State requires 
me to receive ; but from a body which stands in the same relation to 
the People that I do, as intrusted with a share of public power for a 
limited time, and for specific purposes. Their sentiments, however, 
concur with my own conscientious opinions of right in this particular ; 
and I rejoice, therefore, that I can honorably justify the resolutions in my 
place here. It is for this object I have now risen. It would have 
been satisfactory to me if some one of my colleagues had stepped for- 
ward to discharge this duty ; but as no other gentleman has taken the 
.floor, and as I feel that our Legislature may well claim this office at our 
hands, I shall endeavor to perform the task ; embracing this occasion 
of the pendency of the resolutions from Kentucky, in the assurance that 
I am not likely to have any direct opportunity to discuss those of Mas- 
sachusetts. 

The course pursued by the Legislature of Massachusetts differs from 
that of some other States. Resolutions are now before us from the State 
of Kentucky, recommending a division among the States of the proceeds 
of public lands; the State of Maine has sent hither resolutions in favor 
of appropriations for the public defence ; Massachusetts has kept both 
objects in view. At the same time that she transmits to her representa- 
tives her approbation of the principle of the bill for distributing the pro- 
ceeds of the public lands, she transmits, likewise, resolutions in favor of 
a branch of the public defence, committing her to the system of fortifica- 
tions upon the Atlantic. She has not given her sanction to one of these 
measures, to the exclusion of the other. And, in my judgment, this is 



the true view of the whole subject. If there be any set of persons in this 
House, who are for squandering the revenue on fanciful projects of pre- 
tended public defence for the mere purpose of depleting the national 
treasury, them I oppose. And if there be any set of persons, who would 
abate one jot of the appropriations called for by the general service, in 
order to divert a larger share ol the public treasure into the coffers of 
the several States, them also 1 oppose. Neither of these opposite pur- 
poses, if such purposes exist, is just or patriotic; and each of them, 
whatever party they are of, 1 do utteily renounce and abjure. I think 
the two objects^ held in view by the State of Massachusetts, are per- 
fectly reconcileable ; as I shall endeavor to show in the remarks 1 intend 
to submit to the House. 

The constitutionality of the proposed distribution of the proceeds of 
the public lands, of which I entertain no doubt, I shall not at this time 
undertake to discuss. Nor shall I, on the present occasion, trouble the 
House with recapitulating the ordinary arguments in support of the. 
measure. 

Supposing it to be constitutional, and supposing it to be commended 
by various considerations of expediency, which are familiar to the minds 
of gentlemen, and are in themselves undeniable, what I propose to 
examine is, the practicability and propriety of the measure as a ques- 
tion of- finance, having regard to the other paramount demands of the 
public service. 

And, in the view I take of the subject, it is not material to ascertain 
what portion of the public treasure is to be deemed the net proceeds, 
strictly speaking, of the public lands. Practically considered, the sur- 
plus revenue on hand is one thing, though derived from different sources, 
being, at the present time, chiefly the sale of public lands and customs. 
If the distribution-bill passes, it will take from the Treasury neither 
lands nor duties ; but money. The express design of the bill, to be sure., 
is to distribute .the net proceeds of the public lands ; and that design is 
important, in fixing the just amount to be distributed, as also in refer- 
ence to the grounds and inducements of the measure. But there is a 
preliminary question, which rides over all others; and that is, whether 
in fact there be any surplus treasure, over and above the public wants, 
and available for the purpose of distribution. To this question I address 
myself; and to resolve it, I shun all the details of the distribution-bill,, 
and prepare to take a systematic review of the public service, of the state 
of the Treasury, the probable demands upon it, and the extent of its 
resources. Though such a view of the matter be on the face of things 
somewhat broad, it is the only one capable of leading the mind to 
any clear and satisfactory results upon the great question. 

In the course of argument I have marked out to myself, I aspire 
to ascend above the mists of party expediency and local jealousy ; to 
look at the subject as neither of party nor of place, neither of personal 
interests nor of sectional interests, neither of Administration nor of 
Opposition ; and to sketch a brief, though general and comprehen- 
sive, outline of the present resources and exigences of the public ser- 
vice, in the spirit which the dignity of the subject demands of me as a 
statesman and an American. 

And allow me to premise, in explicit terms, and in distinct explan--- 



atiop of my conduct, oa this or any other question, that I purposely 
withhold myself from the agitation of mere party topics in this House. 
Wherein the Administration shall have failed to redeem the pledges 
by which it gained possession of power, I leave it to those, who feel 
aggrieved in that respect, to assert their griefs, and to pursue, here or 
elsewhere, the line of controversy proper to their particular circum- 
stances. Without presuming or intending to question the part any other 
gentlemen take, I may be permitted to say, that my ambition is, and 
my aim shall be, so long as 1 have a place here, and whenever I am 
indulged with a hearing, to speak to the business of the House. It is 
the course dictated to me by my own judgment : it is' a course consonant 
with the wishes of my constituents. The political fortunes of Massa- 
chusetts are not to be marred, nor are they to be mended, by any mere 
party speeches, which her representatives might utter in this House. 

Permit me further to say, once for all, that nothing is to be inferred 
from this in impeachment of my consistency. It has been matter of amuse- 
ment tome, rather than of anger, to perceive myself loudly denounced 
by certain portions of the newspaper-press, for abstaining, in a document 
on the politics of Massachusetts, which I had occasion some time since to 
publish, from the gratuitous application of terms of personal obloquy to 
the constitutional heads of the present Administration. I do not complain. 
Least of all, in this House. The fashion of vituperating here the news- 
paper-press, is one that I disapprove. It is either going too far, or not far 
enough. If it becomes the members of this House to take notice of the 
individual conductors of the press, it behooves us to do it on fair terms, 
as men and as citizens, and not from the vantage-ground of this our high 
official position. Its remarks on us are our own personal affair, not the 
constitutional business of this body. Besides, something is to be pardoned 
to the spirit of liberty. . lvalue the freedom of the press so much, that I am 
slow to quarrel even with its license, when the conduct of public servants 
is in question. We, who move in these agitated scenes, voluntarily ex- 
pose ourselves to the scrutiny of the press. If we cannot sustain its 
examination we deserve to fall. And, for myself, I feel that, having been, 
from the outset to this hour the steady opponent of the present Adminis- 
tration, I have a right, in these latter days, to judge of measures on their 
merits, and where I condemn to condemn with temper and moderation. 
As I preferred no orisons to the rising orb, and gazed on its noontide lustre 
with undazzled eye, I may well continue to contemplate it calmly as it 
hastens to its setting. In a word, I will not suffer myself to be taxed with 
ulterior purposes. 

Nor is any imputation to be cast on the fair fame of Massachusetts. 
She has nailed her flag to the mast. There will it fly, amid sunshine and 
storm alike, proudly to the end, though it have to ' stream like the thunder- 
drift against the wind.' There is in her neither variableness nor shadow 
of change. Whatever allurements may cross her path, 

— Th' imperial votaress passes on, 
In maiden meditation, fancy free. 

She yields herself only to the voice of duty and affection. She has refused, 
to be seduced by the blandishments of the charmer, charm he never so 
wisely : no force could ravish from her the priceless jewel of her undefiled 



virginity. Her untainted purity has never humbled itself in the dust to 
receive the embrace of power, though it should have desended upon her, 
like Jove to the arms of Danae, in a shower of gold. Her opponents have 
set themselves down in perpetual leaguer by her camp ; but have never 
gained entrance within its lines, except in an hour of truce, to receive the 
hospitalities due to a gallant foe. And if, in the contest for constitutional 
liberty, it be her destiny to stand alone, alone will she stand, self-poised, 
like the solid earth itself, in her own elemental principles. In resolving 
to adhere to DanierWebster as her candidate for the Presidency,. she has 
acted without arriere pensce or indirection whatever. She simply moves 
right onward in the march of consistency and honor, unshaken, unseduced, 
unterrified ; she does justice to her own great citizen and to herself; she 
proposes for the Chief Magistracy that individual, in whom she sees her 
political principles personified ; and she leaves the event to the gracious 
disposal of an all wise God. 

Having cleared the way of these preliminary matters, I now proceed 
to the business on which I have arisen to address the House. 

My theory of taxation iswery simple. It is that of the Constitution. 
The revenue should be commensurate with the wants of the country, and 
levied for the limited uses which the Constitution prescribes. Congress 
cannot raise money for any other object. But, in the details of taxation, 
and especially in the imposition of duties on imports, we have full right, 
and it is our duty, so to apportion them as to encourage and sustain the 
domestic industry of the country. 

Whether the precise provisions of the present tariff have tended to 
increase or diminish the amount of public treasure, I do not stop to in- 
quire. It is founded in a compromise, which every consideration of the 
great interests of the country, and of the honor of its public men, requires 
to be respected. I rejoice that, in all the debates of this Congress, no 
gentleman has ventured to call this in question. The President, also, in 
his annual message of this year, and the Secretary of the Treasury in 
his report, have expressed the desire of the Administration to maintain 
the principle of the tariff-act of 1833 in violate. And therefore I cannot 
but express my surprise that the honorable chairman of the Committee 
of Ways and Means (Mr. Cambreleng) should, on a recent occasion, 
have spoken of that act as oppressive to the interests of agriculture and 
labor. Representing, as I do, some of the principal manufacturing com- 
munities in the United States, I feel bound to make a passing remark on 
this subject. 

Whatever tends to diversify the objects of human industry, and to en- 
large the scope of any one branch of industry, is not only beneficial to the 
interests of a country directly in that particular, but it is also beneficial in 
the prosperity it adds to all other departments of labor. Such has been 
the general effect of the introduction and growth of manufacture in this 
country. And it seems passing strange to pretend any exception to the 
general law of industry at this particular season, when the laborer receives 
oettcr wages than at any past time, and when the agriculture of the country 
is in a state of palmy prosperity altogether without parallel in our history. 
Every thing which the land-owner sells is dear; those articles of manu- 
facture, which he has occasion to buy, are cheap. -The high prices, which 
now prevail, are not so much of things generally, as of the products of the 



earth. Corn, sugar, cotton, beef, pork, tobacco, in fact, all the great staples 
of agriculture, have risen in price disproportionately to manufactured com- 
modities. Very singular and extraordinary incidents in trade are the 
consequence of this state of things. Thus, I have been assured that a 
cargo of Indian corn was lately imported into the United States from the 
city of Venice, and sold at a profit ; a thing wholly unprecedented in our 
commerce. Thus, also, beans have gone from France to trie West Indies, 
and been purchased there, to be imported into and sold in the United 
States. It is notorious, indeed, that breadstuffs, and other ordinary pro- 
ducts of agriculture, are dearer in this country at the present time than m 
the foreign markets of the Baltic, the Mediterranean, or even of England. 
And the prices of the great staples of the South bear- similar evidence to 
the general prosperity of agriculture. And if there be one man so faith- 
less on this subject, that he must see and feel in order to believe, let 
him go into any of the regions of country in which manufactories have 
been established under the influence of the protecting system ; and he 
will then have ocular demonstration, in the spectacle of univei sal pros- 
perity about him, of what that system has done for the interests of the 
land-owner. I hope, therefore, to hear no more suggestions calculated to 
unsettle public confidence in the compromise-act. Let us, for a few years 
at least, be able' to anticipate some continuance of stability and consis- 
tency in the treatment of the vast and invaluable manufactures of the 
United States. 

While I start, then, with the avowal of a disposition to hold the national 
expenditures within the uses provided by the Constitution, 1 also maintain 
that, if a proposed expenditure be constitutional, and if it be warranted 
by considerations of justice and public policy, the expenditure should be 
appropriate to the object. There is no other true and wise economy. 
If a thing is to be done, let it be well done, and with adequate means. 
Limit the constitutional uses, be frugal, but not parsimonious, in appli- 
cation to the uses which are 'constitutional. 

A f this moment, the financial condition of the United States is alto- 
gether remarkable. We have discharged, or stand ready to discharge, 
the entire funded debt of the Revolution, and that of the second war with 
Great Britain. We possess an overflowing treasury. These facts ape 
alluded to every day. But is the whole force of the case fully understood? 
It is not merely the discharge of so much debt in money, which distin- 
guishes the present crisis. We issued from the war of the Revolution 
ioaded with pecuniary obligations, contracted in the pursuit of independ- 
ence. Worse than this. We came out of that struggle, encumbered with 
treaty-engagements, entangled in onerous relations, either of fear or favor, 
to nations of Europe. What calamities this fact was capable of bringing 
upon us, we saw plainly enough in the wars of the French Revolution. 
Pending that disastrous series of events, that general overturning of the 
civilized world, it was impossible for us to favor one foreign country with- 
out offending another, tind impossible to be neutral without encountering 
the enmity of all the contending nation?. Our commerce became the 
• common object of universal rapacity. We were despoiled on every sea, 
and in every quarter of the globe. But a day of retribution was to come. 
Having chastised in arms that foe, from whom we suffered most, we have 
exacted of each of the others, of Spain, Denmark, Naples, France, in- 



8 

demniiication for the losses of our pillaged citizens. There remains un- 
adjusted a trifling claim on the Netherlands ; except in regard of which, 
we have had a general reckoning with Europe. They are beginning, on 
the other side of the ocean, to learn our power, and to appreciate our 
destinies. Now, we start fair with the world in the race of civilization, 
of greatness, and of virtue. Wc feel the young giant's strength in our 
limbs. Fear? we never knew ; and wc have passed through all the 
hours of anxiety that attend on a nation's beginnings. This, therefore, 
is the true character of the present epoch in our history ; admonishing 
us to pause in our career, and to look before and after, for the shaping 
out of a policy suited to the great crisis. 

It is admitted on all hands that wc have a surplus of revenue ; that is, 
the expenditures of the last year have not equalled, its receipts. Of this, 
we had official information from the Secretary of the Treasury, and from 
the President himself, at the commencement of the session. No man, of 
either side of the House, pretends to deny it. The available amount, 
however, is a subject of much controversy. By some, it is rated at so 
low a sum as to be unworthy of distribution ; by others, it is exaggerated 
to vast millions. 

It is easy to see how all this contrariety of opinion has arisen." In the 
first place, gentlemen have been actuated by adverse motives, which have 
colored, if they have not confounded, all their perceptions of fact. Next, 
there is a great variety of schemes and plans of expenditure broached in 
one or the other House of Congress, by presenting which in a body, 
without discriminating what is likely to be adopted from what is certain to 
be rejected, there appears an appalling aggregate of appropriation. Some 
gentlemen would have us reckon appropriations,, which are to cover a 
series of years, as all chargeable in the sum total to the revenues of the 
current year. Aud above all, the general practice which prevails in the 
House, t of blending togeiher the past and the present year, and of not 
distinguishing between the income of the two years separately, and the 
expenditure chargeable on each, is a most fruitful source of uncertainty, 
error, and exaggeration. 

Of the detailed estimates which have been given to the country, 
in elucidation of the subject before us, the most elaborate is that of 
an honorable Senator from New York, (Mr. Wright,) in his remarks 
upon the distribution-bill. It would be improper for me to make that 
speech the object of a distinct reply. Nor is there need of it. We 
in this House nave had a similar view of the financial condition of the 
ountry, from the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, 
(Mr. Cambreleng. ) In proceeding to present to the House my own 
conclusions, adverse to that gentleman's, it is due in candor to him to 
say, that I do not perceive in his calculations any evidence of a desire 
to mislead the House in this matter. I differ with him in the details, 
and in the result. But he frankly lays before us the ite:r.s cf supposed 
expenditure, according to his views of the public service, with the 
grounds of his conclusions. I shall do the same. Let the House judge 
between our. respective estimates, wherever there is conflict of opinion 
or fact. 

To avtud all possible error, I shall begin by settling up the affairs of 
the year 1835. It left a surplus of income in the Treasury. What is 
the amount of that surplus ? 



9 

We had in the Treasury, at the end of last year, of avail- 
able funds - - - - * • - - $25,523,986 

The appropriations authorized prior to that time, but not 
expended, deducting the sum applicable to the service 
of tiiis year, the sum to be transferred to the surplus 
fund, and for claims on account of the public debt, are 8,673,072 



Leaving a clear balance of undisputed surplus amounting to $16,850,914 

To this should be added the interest of the United States in the stock 
of the United States Bank. The chairman of the -Committee of Ways 
and Means rejects this, because he apprehends that the Bank intends to 
compel the Government to seek it only through the avenue of a suit in 
chancery. He might as well refuse to credit to the Treasury, any of the 
cash in the deposite banks. If they choose to be refractory, the Gov- 
ernment can obtain its funds on deposite only by means of a suit against 
them or their sureties. I cannot believe that the United States Bank en- 
tertains the purpose imputed to it. If it does attempt to withhold from 
the United States our whole capital stock, whether in order to try the 
question of damages on the protested bill of exchange on France, or for 
any other object,!, as a Member in opposition, and as a firm supporter of the 
Bank in the question of the removal of the deposites, hesitate not to de- 
clare my belief that in so doing the Bank will justly expose itself to the 
united indignation of the whole country. I do not credit this suggestion. 
And charging against the actual value of the stock, the amount of the 
navy-pension-fund, being $619,000, and also the question of damages, if 
gentlemen please, I set down the par of the stock as available to the 
Treasury ; and adding this to the surplus already found, we have the fol- 
lowing aggregate surplus on hand at the beginning of the year : 

Cash on deposite, net balance, - - - - -". $16,850,914- 

Stock in the United States Bank, - 7,000,000 



Total balance of 1835, .... - $23,850,914 

* Thus far there can be no material mistake. Supposing the Government to 
have expired with the last year, it would have possessed, independently of 
unexpended appropriation, so much bank-property in stock or deposites, 
susceptible of distribution among the States. 

Now, if the income of the year 1836 equals the expenditures and 
obligations of the year, ordinary and extraordinary, it is plain that the 
ascertained balance of the last year will rest untouched. If the in- 
come falls short of the expenditures, the deficiency must be charged to 
that balance, and will reduce it. If the income exceeds the expendi- 
ture, there will be a net balance of the budget of this year to be ad- 
ded to the balance of the last. The next step in the inquiry, therefore, 
is to ascertain the probable income of 1836 ,and its probable expenditure. 

Without consuming the time of the House by detailed explanation of any 
grounds of opinion as to the future resources of the Treasury, I shall con- 
tent myself with presenting a few obvious data, upon which I myself 
proceed. 

I find that the actual receipts into the Treasury for the first quarter of 



10 

the present year, as officially made known to Congress by the Secretary 

of the Treasury, are as follows : 

From customs, ------ $5,006,050 

From public lands, ----- 5,439,650 

From miscellaneous sources, - 280,000 



Total to March 3 1 st - - $10,725 ,700 

If the receipts for the remaining three quarters of the year should con- 
tinue to be in the same ratio, the total income of the year 1836 Avill 
amount to 42,902,800 dollars. Will the receipts be in the same ratio ? 
Will the customs fall off? Will the sales of public lands diminish: 
Will either of these increase ? 

Of the customs, I cannot anticipate any large reduction. The av- 
erage annual receipts into the Treasury under this head, from 1817 to 1835 
inclusive, have amounted to twenty-dne millions of dollars. It-is new, 
at tic end of this period, pretty much what it was in the beginning, though 
it has fluctuated very much in the intervening years. Judging from these 
facts, and from the activity of our foreign commerce during the five months 
of the year which have already elapsed, I think it reasonable to rate the 
customs of the year, at little, if any, short of twenty millions. 

It would be rash for me to think of estimating the probable. amount of 
sales of public lands forlS36, as of my own knowledge.- I find that well 
informed gentlemen from the West are of opinion it will reach fifteen 
millions of dollars. And it may not be immaterial to note that the offi- 
cial journal of the Administration, in commenting on the distribution-bill, 
seems to rate the proceeds of the public lands at twenty millions for this, 
and also for the ensuing year. 

Stating. the entire revenue of 1836 at thirty-five millions, I shall at least 
keep considerably within the bounds assumed by all those gentlemen who 
Lave spoKen on my sioe of the question. 

The next inquiry is, what will be the sum total of appropriations for 
the current year ? 

To follow up this inquiry uncleistandingly, I shall take the estimates 
of the Secretary of the Treasury as the basis of my calculation. lie pro- 
poses appropriations to the amount of 17,515,933 dollars. Many of the 
items are beyond the accustomed annual appropriations. For example, 
those appertaining to the navy. For the sake of simplicity and perspi- 
cuity, however, 1 shall designate his estimate as the ordinary appropria- 
tion for the service of 1836; and all items of appropriation not included 
in it, I shall call extraordinary, and add to its amount, so as to make up 
the grand total' of appropriations for the year. 

It is unnecessary to occupy the ear of the House with particular ob- 
servations, in this place, upon such branches of appropriation as have 
actually passed Congress. They will appear in the general estimate, 
which I shall hereafter present. 

Nor shall I trouble the House in reference to every object of expendi- 
ture, reasonable or unreasonable, which any member of either House 
may have proposed or imagined. It will suffice to dwell upon those ap- 
propriations, which will assuredly pass in one form or another, and of 
which the amount only is matter of question. 



i! 

Of private claims, there is a great huftxber in the hand's of various 
committees, or already reported upon in both Houses. Most of them 
are of small amount ; and the aggregate is hardly worth reckoning in 
the calculation I have in hand. 1 am assured by the candid and intelli- 
gent chairman' of the Committee of Claims, (Mr. Whittlesey,) who 
understands the whole subject intimately, that, if those claims on the 
Treasury be considered to the amount of 100,000 dollars, it will be mak- 
ing an ample allowance oh their account. 

There are three objects of -importance before the House, namely, 
the claims of individuals despoiled by Fiance prior to 1S00 ; a bill for 
extending the previsions of the revolutionary pension acts; and a bill for 
granting pensions to certain persons who served in the wars of the West 
against the Indians previous to the treaty of Greenville; which, if they 
should pass, would occasion considerable drafts on the Treasury. Being 
earnestly in favor of the first, I regret that there is no better prospect of its 
being definitively acted upon at the present session. If, as I hope, the 
other two should pass, they would not becon\e chargeable to any great 
extent on the revenues of the current year. 

Of. the uncertain items} of expenditure, the largest is that in execution 
of Indian treaties, including additions made to the appropriation-bill for 
the Indian service, stated by the chairman of the Committee of Ways 
and Means at $8,767,325. Most of this, I presume, arises under the 
treaty with the Cherokees. That treaty is not before the House in any 
shape ; it has not yet been made public ; and we do not yet know how 
much it will take immediately from the Treasury. I rely, however, on 
the veracity and knowledge of the chairman of the Committee on In- 
dian Affairs on the part of the Senate (Mr. White,) who, in a speech 
of his now before me, declares that not much of the expenditure under 
this head will or can fall in this or even the next year; and that the 
new resources, to be thus obtained, will nearly, if not quite, equal the 
increased expenditure. 

There is a harbor-bill, containing numerous items ; together with 
bills for projected custom-houses, hospitals, light-houses, and other public 
works ; and a number of miscellaneous objects of a similar class ; the- 
final amount of which can only be stated conjectuiaiiy in round numbers, 

There is a bill before this House, reported by the Committee on For- 
eign xlffairs, which authorizes the Treasury Department to anticipate the 
payment of the indemnities due to citizens of the United States from 
Naples and France. This bill has been treated, in conversation or in de- 
hate, as an expenditure of the money of the United States. Not so. It is 
but an advance, to be repaid with interest ; a temporary investment ; a sub- 
stitution of securities yielding a profit for securities yielding none ; and 
instead of diminishing, it w r ould, if passed, increase the eventual re- 
sources of the Treasury. I shall not,- therefore, consider this bill as any 
charge on the revenue of the year. 

All the remaining unascertained items of public expenditure, those 
which are chiefly debated as in competition w 7 ith the plan of distributing; 
a share of the public treasure among the. States;, have relation to the de- 
fence of the country. This part of the subject deserves a careful exam- 
ination, as well for its intrinsic importance, as for the large masses of 
monej', which it is proposed to appropriate, the present year, to military 
objects. 



^o P ftl"iSe1 u td U tSi ft'J*" 1 ^ is > "> — the 
nies, and to the sit^io, 'of ! e t ^hewo^ld" r^'H' ^ 
What was the main purpose for which the Co o°;l." STT^ the paSf - 
History shall (ell you, it was to Ai, aln, n """federated together? 

sits a mfs de and who so . m ' ™ J d,S .^S? ishea colleague, who usually 

our vi„r y - f !r 0, ' ed . he P ° !icy of " m u,itime armaments. Shall we chance 
tra ion > l°o ^Tl' be ,?" Se *<* aceoH with t^se of the IdS 
rof h puM^etnc^ opt ^ ''"' V" 68 ' ion ° f ^Hating money 
it is to b P e control ed If he I'S^ "^ V*? the ex P e "*ture of 
tional shape, and I am satisfied Til ■ C °™ e8 befo, ' e me in a co,lsti(u - 

in itself afford a iust"fica torv ca, ^ J!! '° T^ P!' e P aration *>' ™ would 
have an open con ove Z etZt^l'T"' ** "^ We »»^ 
hargo, or confiscate the pff P ,*J T • '' ° n US ' or to seize . em ' 

A very mistake iJ™ it J i L? Ur , c,tl f ens abroad or on the hi ^ seas. 



13 

mitted rule of the civilized world. It is one of the incidents of sover- 
eignty, an inherent power essential to its own preservation, (hat a state 
should have plenary right of defence and of arms, except in so far as it 
may have limited that right by special convention. In virtue of this right, 
a nation may make all soits of armament, assemble and organize armies, 
fleets, and troops of whatever description,* prepare artillery and other arms, 
construct fortifications in the interior or upon its frontier, form camps, 
conclude treaties of alliance and subsidy, and muster its whole physical 
force in the field. In such case, it' any other nation deems itself men- 
aced by such preparations, the established course is for the latter to de- 
mand explanation. The refusal of such explanation, an equivocal or 
haughty answer to a temperate request for it, gives just cause of distrust, 
of counter-armament, and sometimes even of violences and of war, thus 
undertaken for the purpose of striking first, in anticipation of the impend- 
ing adverse blow. To this effect are all the text-writers on international 
law. To this effect is every day's practice in the. diplomatic intercourse 
of the jealously watchful nations of Europe. 

One thing more. The principle, it has been said, involved in the sys- 
tem of public d fence now before the country, is the same which was 
professed by the federal party at the close of the last century. It is not very 
profitable to discuss that point. Our business in this House is rather to 
make history, than to settle its controverted points. 1$Our function here 
is that of statesmen, not of antiquarians. Thus much I hold to be cer- 
tain, that, if the policy of sustaining an efficient system of public defence 
was federalism in 1799, it was republicanism in 1813 ; and in my humble 
opinion it is patriotism and wisdom at all times. If I am called to pro- 
nounce judgment on the train of events, which characterized those re- 
spective eras of 1799 and 1813, one of which happened before I saw the 
light, and the other in my boyhood, I feel that I am competent to regard 
each with the impartial eyes of posterity, and to speak its voice. Let us 
hold ourselves above being deluded by the jargon of party newspapers, 
. which seek to keep stale the 'party animosities of past times by the mis- 
application of ancient names. Words are not seldom divorced from the 
bonds of matrimony with the things they belonged to in other days. 
Each of the great parties, which once divided the nation, committed er- 
rors to be atoned for at the bar of the country and of posterity. Each 
of them had its atoning virtues. Who believes that' George Washington, 
John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton, on the one side, or that Thomas 
Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe on the other, were ene- 
mies of their country ? Not I, for one ; and whatever party names may 
be current about me, I fear that in such unbelief I shall be likely to live 
and to die. Both parties erred, at one time or another, in the degree of 
its opposition to measures required for the security of the national honor. 
Shall we never be warned by example ? Never grow wise by experi- 
ence ? Instead of losing ourselves in the attempt to arrest the flitting 
shadows of the past, let us look to the duties of the present, and the ne- 
cessities of the future, and prepare against when the time comes to act. 

These things being understood, the question recurs, what are the 
military exigencies of the public service at the present moment ? 

To arrive at any approximate solution of this problem, we must exam- 
ine the relations of the United States with nations or races not of our o\v in- 
land, whether they be situated beyond sea or on this continent. 



14 

Our relations with all the governments of the Old World are at this 
moment of the most amicable character. We have a pending difference 
with Great Britain, in regard to our northeastern boundary, which has 
been too long procrastinated, and demands to be brought to a speedy 
issue ; but, notwithstanding this, the generous, the magnanimous part, 
borne by that government in the recent negotiations with France, affords 
an ample guaranty of the mutual friendliness of intention, which animates 
the councils of Great Britain and the United States. We have unsettled 
claims against Holland, for spoliations in the time of Napoleon; and 
against Holland, or Belgium, or both, for the destruction of American 
property at Antwerp in 1830, during the bombardment of that city by 
the Dutch forces in the citadel and on the Scheldt. With exception 
of these particulars, lam not aware of any subsisting difference between 
the United States, and either of the trans-atlantic powers. And there is 
manifestly nothing in these facts to affect the military policy of the United 
States. 

The attitude of the United State. 2 , as they now present themselves to 
the eyes of Europe, is one creditable to our honor, and auspicious to our 
future peace. Our controversy with France has at length reached the 
crisis of a final and favorable issue, by the payment, on her part, of 
the instalments of indemnity due to us by the treaty of 1831, and so long 
withheld. And the result cannot fail to strengthen us on the side of 
Europe. 

For myself, I can truly say that E never belisved that controversy would 
end in war. My mind steadily repelled any such conclusion. When the 
cloud overhanging our prospect was at the darkest, there was abundant 
cause to foreknow it would soon give place to the returning light of day. 
Right, feeling, interest, all combated in behalf of the United States. 

Whether the ministers of the United States did or did not exhibit 
adroitness, good temper, diplomatic skill, in the negotiations with France, 
is a thing which it is neither profitable nor reasonable to debate in this 
connexion. Our national cause is not to be adjudged upon such inci- 
dental points. Suffice it forme that, on. the merits of the question, the 
right and justice lay on the side of the United States, the wrong and in- 
justice on the side of France. Hers was the original injury. Hers 
was the protracted delay of reparation, which aggravated the original in- 
jury. Hers was the added injustice of seeking to shun or adjourn the 
execution of the treaty of indemnity, by the interposition of impossible 
conditions in reference to a matter subsequent to, and independent of, 
the engagements of the treaty itself. For this, in my judgment, and not 
the consideration whether an executive message to Congress is a purely 
domestic fact, was the strong point in our case. The message, of which 
France complained, was aside from, and independent of, the treaty. 
Whether it was injurious to the honor of France or not, — whether France 
had or had not a right to find fault with it, — she had no right, in justice or 
in honor, to make it a pretext for refusing or delaying the execution of 
engagements already unreasonably delayed. If aggrieved by the mes- 
sage, she should have come forward, and in the indignant spirit of true 
gallantry, fulfilled her own promises; and then, if she wanted to quarrel 
on a punctilio, but not sooner, would have been the time for her to 
discuss whether her wounded dignity required an explanation of the 



15 

terms of the message. In adopting such a course, she would have had the 
moral force of opinion in her favor ; in rejecting it, she threw away the 
only chance in her hand. I repeat, therefore, that the merits of the 
question were too decidedly with us to admit of the supposition of war. 

To the same effect was the feeling of the two nations. In the United 
States we all know there was no desire of war with France. And 
I avail myself of this opportunity to repel a base calumny, in reference to 
the views of the manufacturers of the North, which made its appearance 
at a time when this question was most nicely balanced. They were said 
to incline to war from, considerations of interest. -The imputation was 
a foul falsehood, and as groundless as foul. They, in common with 
all the rest of the nation, anxiously desired a pacific termination of our 
difficulties with France. There goes much preparation of feeling to bring 
on war between two nations, associated by relations of amity and advan- 
tage. It needs deep irritation to rouse the instinct of fight, of which there 
is doubtless enough in us, and the taste of blood to madden the passions of 
men. Nothing of this existed either here or in France, where, as I know 
from intimate experience, we Americans are a favored people. And the 
reason is very obvious. Apart from considerations of interest, France 
and the United States are united by historical sympathies; by the glori- 
ous memofy of the battles fought by us, and the victories achieved, under a 
common banner; and by our respective positions, as the leading revolu- 
tionary powers, the one of Europe, the other of America. 

And the considerations of interest were equally conclusive. We receive 
from France mere luxuries, objects of taste and fashion ; she receives of 
us in exchange, raw products, necessaries, which, with her sales to us, are 
the very life-blood of her industry. One-fourth of her whole commerce is 
with us. Take the year 1831 as an example; the exports of France for which 
year amounted to 424,202,754 francs ; and of this aggregate, the value of 
110,351,696 francs came to the United States. France received pay for 
one-half of this in cotton, without which, or obtaining which at a war- 
price, her cotton manufactories could not stand in competition with those 
of other nations buying at a peace-price. Look at only two of the ar- 
ticles we buy of her. By the treaty of 1831, we stipulated to favor the 
wines of France ; and, in the impulse of a were spirit of friendship, we 
voluntarily extended the favor to her silks. In the year 1830, there 
were imported into the United States, from France, silks to the value of 
3,639,079 dollars. In the four succeeding years, there was an average 
amount of 6,541,897 dollars ; which, under the fears of an interrupted 
commerce, rose in 1835 to the sum of 12,129,640 dollars. There was 
also, an augmentation of the quantity of the wines imported from France, to 
the average annual amount of 100,000 gallons. And upon these two ar- 
ticles alone, there has been a reduction of duty during the last four years 
to the amount of 5,966,139 dollars in favor of France. Under these 
circumstances the 3 United States could, without firing a gun, have shaken 
France to its very centre. It needed only that the men of this day, and 
the women of this day, sensitive as these last always are to the call of 
duty and of country, should, emulating the example set them in a cor- 
responding case by their fathers and their mothers of the time of the war of 
independence, abstain, as they well might, from the use of French wines 
and French silks, to have filled the interior of France with ruin, if not 



1 n 

with insurrection. And the injury to the permanent interests of France 
would have been most enormous; since the wines of Portugal, Spain, 
Italy, Austria, and the Rhine, and the silks of England, Asia, and the 
Mediterranean, would have been likely to take possession of our mar- 
ket in lieu cf those of Fiance. 

These facts, while they prove that war was at no time probable, prove 
also that the relations between us and France, as well as between us and 
Great Britain, must continue to-be of the closest amity. 

I congratulate Fiance, therefore, upon the restoration of assured har- 
mony between us. Her domestic condition is not one to be improved by 
a mere maritime war with America, or a war of hopeless invasion of our 
territory. There are too many elements of revolution at work in her own 
bosom. Is it known to this House, that twice, since the accession of the 
House of Orleans to the throne, there have been more Frenchmen under 
arms, engaged in battle within France itself, than would have sufficed to 
win the battle of Waterloo ? Her government rests on the crater of a 
slumbering, but not extinct, volcano ; which, had foreign affairs gone ill 
with her, might at any moment have 'burst forth in fury, and scattered her 
present rulers to the four quarters of the sky. Her ' fire-new stamp of 
honor' will scarce yet give currency to counterfeit coin. II m present 
dynasty is not quite firm enough in the saddle, to attempt to ride over the 
faith of treaties. Had she undertaken it 3 the blazonry of Orleans might 
have been replaced by the Gallic cock, as that of Bourbon had been al- 
ready ; the tricolor, which again waves in the van of her armies and as 
the banner of her navies, might have been followed, as of old, by the 
consular fasces or the imperial eagles; and upon the ruins of the mon- 
archy of July, there might have re-arisen, phoenix-like, the French Re- 
public, one and indivisible, to send forth its propagandist legions on a new 
mission of liberty through astonished Europe. What France needs, and 
what she has got, is repose. She has gone through the horrors of the 
first Revolution, the conquests of the Republic, the glories of the Empire, 
and the shames of the Restoration; and her best policy now is to show- 
that 

— Peace hath'its victories 
No less renowned than war, — 

by the development of her domestic resources and the consolidation of 
her institutions. 

I congratulate the United States not less. To us, also, the evils of the war 
must have been almost incalculable. No war, however glorious its end- 
ing might be, could fail to be deeply injurious to the country. It would 
be followed by a train of moral and political ills of tremendous magni- 
tude. It would occasion immense loss to the nation, in the withdrawal 
of its resources from the pursuits of industry, to be applied to the work 
of destruction. Reflect on the overflowing prosperity, which twenty 
years of peace have bestowed upon the United States. And, in addition 
to these general evils, accompanying war at all times, would have been 
the ['articular circumstances of a war at such a time, and against such a 
nation. Our immense commerce, scattered through every clime, our 
whalemen, chasing their prey in the most distant seas, our richly laden 
ships in the East Indies and in the waters of Europe and South America, 
subject to be assailed by the cruisers and privateers of a power possessing 



17 

no similar commerce to be assailed by us in return. Our navy, gallant, 
and consecrated by victory after victory, but how much inferior in force 
of nil/fibers to that of the adversary ! Our fortifications, not only incom- 
plete, but ungarnished of arms, and half dismantled, as I hope they never 
will be hereafter. Add to which the difficulties in the way of military 
bperations against France. Her ships of war numerous and ready for 
action. Her powerful standing army. Her coast, one vast rampart of 
brass and iron, which, even when she had scarce a ship afloat for its de- 
fence, her navy having been annihilated by Nelson at the mouths of the 
Nile and off Cape Trafalgar, still defied and baffled all the attempts of 
England, as the disastrous expeditions of Walcheren and the Isle-du-Rhe 
bear witness. May our hearts run over in thankfulness to the gracious 
Disposer of events, that he vouchsafed to preserve us from the calamities 
of such a war ! 

And I congratulate the world. Great Britain, France, and the United 
States, stand together in the first rank of constitutional governments. We 
have no business to quarrel together. Better functions , and higher des- 
tinies, belong to us in the general scheme of earth's affairs. To cheer on- 
ward the great cause of civilization and liberty, to conquer new realms 
to the empire of knowledge, to march side by side as the vanguard of 
constitutional right in defiance of all gainsayers, to develope the social 
capacities of our race, these, and not the task of mutual injury, be our 
chosen acts. It is a fact, singular and memorable, that, for twenty years 
past, the world has witnessed no foreign war in the limits of Chris- 
tendom : I mean, of Christian power against Christian power. The prov- 
idence of God seems, for his own wise ends, to have averted such an 
event. All the wars of that period have been either of Christian 
against Infidel, or they have been wars of domestic revolution within each 
single country or its possessions. I rejoice that we o!id not make an ex- 
ception to the rule. Is there not a moral in this fact? I think there is; 
and a moral pertinent to the case in hand. 

Upon this review of our trans-atlantic relations, there is, it is plain, no 
specific point of immediate peril in that quarter, calling for war-prep- 
arations, and for expenditures of money in direct relation to such end. 
What we need in this respect is the gradual placing of the country in a 
posture of defence adapted less to the, actual danger, than to the defin- 
able contingencies of danger, on the side of Europe. 

Movement is the characteristic of the present epoch. It is often spoken 
of: has it been duly pondered, in reference to our own domestic legislation ? 
Is it not time to do so ? Is it not the part of wise men, of prudent patriots ? 
All society is instinct with life, enterprise, competition, liberty. Nations 
are balanced. Foreign wars, as I have already suggested, have ceased. 
The world gazes on the spectacle of deeply interesting domestic struggles. 
That glorious Christendom, of which we compose no mean part, is mov- 
ing on to some predestined, but jet unscanned, point, in the boundless 
future of ages. Society is rolling forward, like a planet wheeled through 
its orbit in the heavens. Shall we, as did the ancient astronomers, trust- 
ing to delusive appearances, imagine that our earth is the stationary cen- 
tre of the system ? Or shall we look into causes and effects, to discover 
that we are but an element of the universal whole, impelled rather than 
impelling, if acting, yet acted upon with intenser force ? Shall we shut 
% 



18 . 

our eyes, in wilful ignorance of events ? Shall we fold our arms in list- 
less indilference to the march of fate ? It beseems us to look at our po- 
sition ; to consider its relations ; to take observation of the head-lands 
and land-marks about us; to elevate ourselves to our destiny, if glo- 
rious ; to brace ourselves to the shock, if otherwise ; and to make ready 
for either doubtful event. 

Inspecting the social and revolutionary movements of the present 
generation, we see that Christendom is divided into great adverse 
classes : the friends of improved constitutional institutions, who control 
America and Western Europe ; and the enemies of such institutions, who 
are supreme in Central and Eastern Europe. The next Avar which di- 
vides the world, it is clearly enough perceived, will be that war of opinion, 
which Canning long ago foretold to come. Our position, as the leading 
power of the New World, is, and must be, a responsible and conspicuous 
one, at all events. Still more, as we are the exemplar Republic, not of 
America only, but of the w r orld. For what is the petty state of San Ma- 
rino, or a free city here and there in Germany, or even the narrow moun- 
tain Republic of the Swiss, compared with this vast representative Con- 
federacy of ours, filling greater space than the whole of Europe ? When 
collision comes, as sooner or later it will, and at what hour we know 
not, we shall need to be in possession of two things, alike essential to 
our neutrality, our safety, our existence. They are, first, a competent 
system of maritime defences ; and, secondly, the national vigor and in- 
ternal health and resources requisite for employing those means of de- 
fence to effect. Both are equally indispensable. Either without the 
other is naught. The weapon to ward off or to strike, the spirit and the 
strength to wield it, — these are the mind's picture of a free people, jeal- 
ous of their independence, and resolute in the maintenance of their na- 
tional rights. 

Our navy, and the fortifications of the Atlantic and Gulf, constitute the 
co-ordinate parts of a system of maritime, defence and security. Each 
of them sustains and is sustained by the other : the navy as the agent to 
repel the enemy or defend against his approach ; and fortifications as the 
points (Pappui of the combined forces of sea and land. Without going 
back to a period anterior to the last war, when this general system, and 
especially the navy, had to struggle with party difficulties or personal 
prejudices, it suffices to say, that the experience of that war put an end 
to all controversy respecting the value of maritime defences. Our navy 
had covered itself with glory. All men of all parties, and all sections of 
the country, gave to it their good will. It was justly remarked, that our 
party divisions, acrimonious as they were, ceased at the water's edge. 
Accordingly, on the instant after the restoration of peace, we saw three 
great objects simultaneously pursued by our public men : first, there- 
establishment of the pecuniary credit of the Treasury ; secondly, the 
re-organization of our system of public defences, as they are now in 
progress ; thirdly, the development and fostering of the internal re- 
sources of the country, its commerce^manufactures, agriculture, fisheries, 
and mines. 

As that system of public defence, which came into being, in a national 
point of view, with the war of the Revolution, was extended in conse- 
quence of our difficulties with France in 1798, and triumphed over all 



19 

obstacles in the war of 1813 with England, I am not sorry to see it con- 
firmed and advanced by the apprehended event of another collision with 
France. Regarded as a whole, it consists of, first, a navy; second, for- 
tifications; third, an array, kept sedulously within the regular wants of 
the country ; fourth, an organized militia ; and fifth, the naval depots, 
ports of refuge, arsenals, armories, and munitions of war, requisite for 
the service and supply of the other branches of the system. Subsidiary 
to which, of course, is a chain of interior communications, adapted both 
to the defence and to the commercial interests of the country. 

There seems to be much vagueness and apprehensiveness in the minds 
of members on this subject. It has been very emphatically asked by 
the gentleman from Kentucky, (Mr. C. Allan,) and others, whether it 
be the policy to cover this country with a vast military organization, like 
what is observed in Europe. Such is not my aim. There is no need to 
augment our army in the ratio of countries beyond sea, for the very rea- 
son that the Ocean divides us. And, for the same reason, we need a 
competent naval force, and the fortifications which are to support it, be- 
cause on that ocean they and we meet. The United States are assaila- 
ble by the powers of Europe only through the means of maritime ap- 
proach. They must come to us. The colonial possessions on the con- 
tinent of America, or in its waters, which many of them possess, do not 
jrelieve them from this difficulty. England, even, with her extensive 
territory on our northern frontier, has not within it, and cannot have, the 
resources, in men, munitions, and money, necessary to the carrying on of 
war against the United States. All these, to reach us with the bare 
point of offence, must be water-borne. Possessing competent maritime 
defences, we shall have our national quarrels decided upon the Ocean, 
instead of our own territory. Our wars will be maritime, leaving un- 
touched all our national resources, except our foreign commerce. 

Independently of the exigencies of actual war, this form of defence is 
of permanent importance in time of peace, for the protection of our 
wide-spread commerce. In regard to this commerce, there is a perfect 
unity of interest pervading the whole country. All its departments are 
inseparably interwoven together. This is plain enough so far as regards 
our vast and increasing coasting trade. It is not less true of other things. 
Take the whale fishery of the Northern States, which is pursued in the 
remotest waters of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Is not this a national 
interest ? If you doubt, ask yourself where its products are consumed. 
Are they not necessaries of life throughout the United States ? Look 
at our European commerce. They are ships of the North which navi- 
gate the Atlantic ; but each of them transports to Europe a cargo of to- 
bacco or cotton, owned and produced in the South, or in the valley of 
the Mississippi. Is it the ship, or the cargo more valuable than the 
ship five times over, which needs the protection of a navy? Britain 
is no longer mistress of the seas. The magic of her naval ascendency 
is dispelled. Prospero has lost his wand. The Ocean is hers no lon- 
ger. Our hardy seamen have vindicated it as their own. We, and the 
other nations of the globe, our friends and allies, or our enemies, as they 
may choose, are now the coequal tenants in common of the great plain 
of waters. Our fleets ride over it at will, as their rightful pathway. 
Our mariners draw from its unsounded depths the rich rewards of enter- 



20 

prise and courage. And I would have it s,o. Never may the time again 
come, when the ships of the North, freighted with the wealth of the 
South and the West, shall be swept from the sea, as they were in the 
wars consequent on the French Revolution, the passive prey of the ra- 
pacity of all Europe. 

Another consideration. Navies are an arm of public defence pecu- 
liarly appropriate to free governments. Was it ever known that ambitious 
men left the quarter-deck, which had been the scene of their triumphs 
and their glory, to compass the downfal of the liberties of their country ? 
Have the brave sailors, scarred in a hundred battles, ever been found 
prostituting themselves to the work of elevating a victorious commander 
to the purple ? No, these are the abuses which belong to successful 
armies. Sailors are ever free-hearted as they are uncalculating, and 
generous-minded as brave. Was it not with her wooden walls that Athens 
repelled the Persian ? Most of the more eminent among the cultivated 
state* of Greece, as Athens, Crete, Rhodes, were naval powers. So it 
was in the middle age, with the republics of Italy, which served to keep 
alive the expiring torch of liberty and civilization amid the surrrounding 
darkness of barbaric invasion. I remember the remark, long ago, in 
the politics of Aristotle, that the sailor population of the Pireeus was the 
freest in spirit of all the inhabitants of democratic Athens. It is Dante, 
I think, who in like manner characterizes the mariners of the quarter of 
the arsenal in Venice. And, in later times, where shall we look for 
some of the purest and brightest examples of power and freedom united ? 
Is it not in Britain and the Netherlands, out of which so large a part of 
us have sprung, and whose policy told them to fight their battles, not on 
their own soil, but on the ocean ? 

Not long since, in debate upon another subject, an honorable gentle- 
man (Mr. Hawes,) expressed much unwillingness to expose our seamen 
to the perils and hardships of an expedition to explore the Antarctic seas. 
I beg leave to assure that gentleman, that the hardy population, in the 
midst of which I was born and bred, do not stand in need of any such 
compassionate care. Ocean is the plaything of our childhood. We are 
at home on the wave as on the shore. We dally with the wind. Wescorn 
the storm. We regard the sublime expanse of sky and sea before us 
with the emotions which it is fitted to inspire ; but they are elevating 
emotions ; and I know of no situation, where the instinct of man's inborn 
charter of liberty is more vividly present to the mind, than when bound- 
ing over mid-ocean, in a gallant ship, with the flag of one's country at her 
masthead. It is not in such scenes that we learn to be false to freedom 
or to fear danger. 

In considering the relative extent of the navy, and of the fortifications 
associated with it, I can but do as others do, in expressing my hearty con- 
currence with the views of the Secretary of War, as approved by the 
President. 1 have heard strange doctrines in regard to our military men, 
since I became a member of this House. It seems to be thought matter 
of reproach, in some quarters, if an officer of the army possesses the 
knowledge and qualifications which liberal studies are prone to impart. 
I honor the Secretary of War the more, in that he adds to the qualities of 
a brave man and a successful commander the taste and the habit of intel- 
lectual cultivation. His report on the subject of our military defences is 



21 

worthy of his character as an officer and a statesman. As at present ad- 
vised, I can scarce hesitate to vote for all such military appropriations as 
come within the scope of his recommendations, sanctioned as these are 
by the President. In elucidation of my own views on this point, I have 
but a single idea to suggest to the House. 

Military writers of some note have doubted the expediency of at- 
tempting to fortify an extensive land-frontier. There never was any 
question, however, as to a sea-frontier. All experience, of all, ages and 
all nations, has favored the latter. There is abundant reason for the 
distinction. An army, which invades a country by land, has the s*ame means 
of retreat, as of advance. H it can maintain itself on the foreign soil by 
force of arms, it will do so. An army which invades by sea, needs just 
as much physical strength as if it came by land. In addition to all the 
means of attack and defence, which it must have to operate on the land, 
precisely as if it were a mere land-force, it is wholly dependent on 
ships of war, for the transportation of itself and of its munitions. Thus 
situated, it may land, ravage and burn, and fly back to its ships ; but it 
cannot act permanently and efficaciously, unless its fleet, possess a se- 
cure place of refuge. To obtain such a place, is of necessity its first 
object. Its magnitude, and consequent power, are greatly restricted by 
the difficulty of conveying a large army, with its equipage, supplies, and 
horses, across the sea, even for a short distance. Not so on the land 
side. There a powerful army can push itself into a contiguous foreign 
territory in such overwhelming numbers, as to be comparatively regard- 
less of the fortifications scattered along the frontier. Of what avail to 
either party were the fortresses of Austrian or French Flanders, of the 
Rhine, or of Italy, in the campaigns of Napoleon ? There is a still more 
striking case, that of the Spanish Peninsula, which illustrates both sides 
of the question- The Peninsula adjoins France on a part of its northern 
frontier. By which it has happened, that the people of the Peninsula could 
and did invade France at will, and at one period held for a long 
time a part of her southern provinces ; and France has always been able 
to throw her armies into Spain. On its extensive maritime frontier, the 
Peninsula is defended, not by a continuous line -of battlements covering 
its whole coast,, but by admirable fortifications for the security of selected 
points , important in themselves, either- as naval stations, or as populous 
wealthy sea-ports. Such is the character of the military works of Bar- 
celona, Alicante, Carthagena, Malaga, Cadiz, Lisbon, Oporto, Corunna, 
Bilbao, and San Sebastian. Look now at the consequence. England 
has been at war with Spain not unfrequentiy for upwards of two cen- 
turies. During the latter part of the time, she has been altogether su- 
preme on the sea ; yet she has never found it in her power to make an 
effective hostile lodgment in Spain, except at Gibraltar, virtually insular 
in situation ; and a mere island fortress must of necessity yield in time 
to any decidedly superior naval power. It is equally true, as I remarked 
before, that, in modern times, when France has erected suitable fortifi- 
cations for the defence of her maritime frontier, although England could 
land at Toulon and other points on the French coast, and although the two 
countries are absolutely in sight of each other, yet she could never make 
any headway in that direction, and was only able to succeed through alli- 
ances in Spain or the Netherlands, which gave her the advantage of action 



22 

against aland-frontier. The same thing might be largely illustrated by 
other examples in the history of the wars of modern Europe. While, there- 
fore, if undefended by fortifications and a naval force, an ocean frontier af- 
fords peculiar facililies for the approach of an enemy, it presents, if ade- 
quately protected by suitable defences, peculiar facilities for resisting hos- 
tile operations. But I forbear to trespass on the patience of the House ; 
concluding, from the whole matter, that, though it would be chimerical, an 
intolerable tax on the industry of the nation, and the ground of necessity 
for alarming additions to the regular army, to attempt to guard our im- 
mense seacoast by means of a wall of stone bristling with cannon, yet the 
security of our maritime frontier, in the manner and with the limitations 
explained by the Secretary of War, is due to the honor and to the highest 
interests of the United States. 

Our policy is peace. We have it now, so far as regards the nations of 
Europe ; and long may we possess it ; for it places before us a future of 
prosperity such as the world never saw. It is our duty and our interest 
to say to them, — We make you the tender of our friendship, we desire your 
good will, we ask it, we seek it ; but we seek it as an independent nation 
of free and brave men, conscious of their strength. Like the eagle in our 
coat of arms, we hold the olive branch in one hand, and the arrows of death 
in the other. We should continue to deprecate war as among the dead- 
liest curses, moral, political, and economical, which could befall us; but 
it would be disastrous to look towards it under the panic fears of con- 
scious imbecility. In the courage of our population, in the spirit of free- 
dom and the patriotic nationality of sentiment which animate the country, 
in the vigor of character proper to us, we possess the last and best guar- 
anty of our independence as a People. And in the course of events, 
much has happened to strengthen us against the hazards of war. Steam, 
it may be, will prove the means of a complete revolution in military ope- 
rations upon our 'seaboard. Men and munitions can be concentrated on 
a menaced point with wonderful despatch by its agency. Its direct uses 
in war, not as applied' to moveable batteries only> but in other modes of 
action, are as yet scarce beginning to be appreciated. . Our pecuniary 
resources as a nation are fresh, elastic, inestimable. With such moderate 
and reasonable military defences as the country ought to have, and as 
would be unfelt in their cost by the people, we may rest secure against 
all the evils, or even the danger, of trans-atlantic wars. Then Europe 
will have added cause to say, 

Still one great clime, in full and free defiance, 
Yet rears her crest unconquered and sublime, 
Above the far Atlantic. 

Then, if her disciplined legions invade us, we need not flinch from the 
encounter. Could she send braver or better men than fell before the 
charging bayonets of Scott at Chippewa, or the unerring rifles of Ken- 
tucky and Tennessee with Jackson at New Orleans? No, not if the 
victors of Marengo or, Jena, not if the vanquished of Vittoria or Waterloo 
should come, with Soult or Gerard at their head. Like the people of 
old Rome, in peaceful times we may retire now and then to the Aven- 
tine mount in disgust ; rallying to our posts again, when the voice of our 
country calls. And they who cross the sea to assail us, like the waves 



23 

•that spend themselves in idle fury upon our shores, will find us firm, 
compacted, immoveable, as the everlasting ribs of the Continent. 

Such are the considerations, exclusively appropriate to the question of 
defences on the maritime frontier, with especial reference to the nations 
of Europe. The considerations, applicable to the question of interior 
defences, are of another class. They regard either the Indians, cr the 
new states, into which the vast American possessions of Spain and 
Portugal have been resolved. 

There is but one of those new nations, whose territory touches our 
own. Each of them, except the Mexican States, is separated from us 
by the sea, and, in order to reach our territory, must overcome the same 
difficulties of maritime assault, which defend us on the side of Europe. 
If protected by seaboard works, against the nations of Europe, we shall be 
protected against all but one of those of America. Add to which, their 
extreme domestic weakness, and their total destitution of the means of 
carrying on remote w T ar, free us from any cause to apprehend attack of 
our territory from that quarter. They can reach us only through our 
mercantile marine, which, in case of hostilities, would be exposed to 
the depredations of privateers or pirates cruising under their flag. This 
fact offers another inducement for giving perfect efficiency to our navy, 
the sole arm of defence which we need, so far as regards the empire of 
Brazil, and the republics of South America. 

The Mexican States, however, the most populous and the most effi- 
cient of the republics of Spanish America, stretch to the southwestern 
confines of the United States. In common with the other nations of 
Spanish America, and more advantageously than they, this Republic 
may assail our commerce in the Gulf of Mexico. On that sea it is to 
be met, in case of war, by naval means, and especially with armed ves- 
sels of the smaller class. It is impossible to form an opinion of the 
military defences proper on the land-side of that Republic, without 
coming at once to the train of passing events in relation to Texas. 

When the first obscure tidings of the victory of San Jacinto reached 
us, they caused the manifestation of a lively sensibility in the debates of 
this House. There appeared, on the one side, a ready and eager belief 
in the tidings,, and a disposition to acknowledge at once the independ- 
ence of Texas, or to consider the alternative of its annexation to the 
United States ; on the other side, something of distrust and doubt as to 
the correctness of the intelligence, and of decided opposition to any 
immediate action upon the grave questions involved in the subject. We 
of the North, it was then said, heard with no willing ears the unwel- 
come news of the triumph of the Texans, Never was there a greater 
mistake. I received the imperfect accounts of that battle with hopeful, 
but anxious, rejoicing, and with extreme solicitude for its truth ; be- 
cause I considered it as delivering us from the otherwise certain calamity 
of a war in the West. 

I believed then, as I believe now, that there has existed, in parts of the 
United States, a settled purpose to sever Texas fiom the Mexican Re- 
public. I knew that the commanding general of the United States on 
that frontier was collecting troops, and preparing, by order of his Gov- 
ernment, to take post within the possessory limits of the province of 
Texas. I had reason to think the present Administration long since 



24 

treated for the cession of Texas. I saw that the individuals under arms 
in that province were mostly our own countrymen, carrying on war by 
resources wholly drawn from this country. Under these circumstances, 
if events were the reverse of what they prove to be, a war between the 
United States and the Mexican Republic would have been inevitable. 
I say this, without impeaching, in any sense, the good faith of our own 
Government. If Santa Ana had beaten or driven before him the Ame- 
ricans in Texas, if a victorious Mexican army had approached the banks 
of the Sabine or even of the Neches, whatever might be the policy or 
wishes of the Administration, whatever the con'duct of its officers, it 
would have been impossible to restrain the overflowing enthusiasm of 
the people of the South-West, their military ardor, their sympathy in the 
cause of their kinsmen and fellow-citizens in Texas. I appeal to the 
gentleman from Kentucky just before me, (Mr. Williams,) to bear me 
witness, whether the young men of the West would not have taken arms 
and rushed to the frontier by irrepressible thousands, if they had seen the 
Mexicans, flushed with victory, approximating towards the borders of 
Louisiana. I know it ; I know that the Government of the United States, 
if so disposed, could not have prevented it; and, therefore, I regard the 
victory of San Jacinto with hearty satisfaction. 

Nor is this satisfaction diminished by the circumstance, that the result 
of that battle brings home to us the question of the future disposition 
of Texas. We have now reached, without a war, a point which other- 
wise we should have reached inevitably, ere long, through a war. Thus 
much is pure gain to us, in the saving of blood and of treasure. The 
political question, with all its difficulties, we should have had at all 
events. But we have no occasion, in the changed circumstances, to 
look to the otherwise possible, if not probable, expenditures and hazards 
of a war with the Mexican States. 

For the rest, there can be no question of the propriety of recognising the 
independence of Texas, whenever that is a clearly established fact. We 
may do this without giving just cause of umbrage to any foreign power. 
The Mexicans, who obtained from us an acknowledgment of their sove- 
reignty founded on revolution, can scarce complain of the application 
of the principle to the case of Texas. Its erection into a separate gov- 
ernment, in amity with us, would interpose a neutral barrier power be- 
tween us and the great body of the Mexican Republic. 

The annexation of Texas to the United States is a totally different 
thing, involving a train of evils, as the propagation among us of a spirit 
of military conquest, the chances of foreign jealousy and collision, and 
peril to the durability of the Union itself, which I cannot contemplate 
without deep solicitude and repulsive dread. I will not permit myself 
to anticipate the appropriation by Congress of any money to the accom- 
plishment of such an end. 

Looking to the alternative of the independence of Texas as the only 
probable one, it greatly simplifies the question of the interior defences 
of the United States. W T e shall border on the Mexican Republic no- 
where but in the extreme and yet unpeopled West. In the interior, 
our military organization will have relation almost exclusively to the 
Indians. 

Whatever appropriations may be needed for the suppression of the 



25 

existing hostilities among the Seminoles and Creeks, Congress, we know, 
will promptly vote, as occasion requires. And it may be taken for 
certain that all the Indians, still remaining within the limits of any of the 
United States, will be speedily removed to the country provided for 
them beyond the Mississippi. The time has gone by, to give them any 
different destination. Their lot is now inevitable. Most of them, in- 
cluding the more numerous tribes, the Creeks and Cherokees, are under 
treaty to emigrate. When the emigration shall be completed, there will be, 
Indians who have already emigrated - 31,348 

Indians to be removed 72,181 

Indians of the indigenous tribes - 150,341 



making a total of 253,870 

collected on the western frontier of the United States. Can these 
Indians, a large part of them driven by us from their ancient homes, and 
aggregated together in spite of themselves, look with an affectionate 
eye towards the Government of the United States? It is impossible. 
Whether there will ever appear among them another Philip of Mount 
Hope, another Tecumseh, to rally their tribes against us, we know not ; 
but we have ample experience, in the late contest with the Winneba- 
goes, and in the present attitude of the Creeks and Seminoles, to teach us 
the necessity of being on our guard in this matter. Concentrated as 
they are and will be on the borders of Arkansas and Missouri, in communi- 
cation with the savage tribes of the Mexican territory, and through them 
with the Mexican Republic itself, and in control of the vast plains of 
the heart of the Continent, they have it in their power to be either highly 
serviceable to the frontier settlements of the United States, or deeply 
injurious, by the congenial warfare of those great savannahs, where 
men are capable of rapid change of place by means of the horse, and 
never want the readiest and most effective of cavalry-weapons, the lance, 
with which so many of the celebrated battles of Spanish America, as 
Bojaca, Junin, Ayacucho, have been won. To make the Indians our 
hearty friends, we should enter, at once, into plans of conciliation and of 
political fellowship, suited to the object. Meanwhile, to prepare against 
the contingency of war in that quarter, and to prevent even its approaches, 
we need a continuous line of posts along the western frontier, a cordon 
militaire^ for our own defence, and for the restraint of the Indians. What- 
ever augmentation of the army this necessity may call for, let us grant, 
promptly, freely, manfully, — without being terrified from our duty by the 
apprehension that a regiment more or less of regular troops can affect in 
any way the inextinguishable devotion to liberty which inspires the Amer- 
ican People. 

For myself, I shall continue, in the discussion of this matter, to look 
with a steady eye to the single point of the exigencies of the public ser- 
vice. No secondary consideration shall distract my thoughts, no inci- 
dental objects divert my attention, from the only true question in all these 
cases, — that is, — what does the general interest of the country as such re- 
quire ? In this, I am fixed and resolved ; as between us and our public 
enemies, to stand by the country. I would have the country right, in all 
its controversies : 

Thrice is he armed, that hath his quarrel just. 



26 

But I would not suffer my own personal impression of the right or wrong 
of its cause to impel me to the abandonment of that cause. I shall give 
my vote, and if need be my voice, as I have hitherto done, to every 
appropriation, which is asked for in good faith, and sustained by reason- 
able evidence of its propriety. And it matters not to me, whether the 
money is to be expended on the banks of the Merrimac of the East or 
the Merrimac of the West. Still it is my country. 

Entertaining these general views of the public service, — acting upon 
them in the votes I give in this House, — I aver that, even upon the lib- 
eral rules of appropriation which I advocate and observe, there will re- 
main in the Treasury, at the expiration of the present year, a surplus 
equal to the whole revenue of ordinary years. To illustrate the fact, I 
subjoin the following estimate of the appropriations, probable or certain, 
of the present year, made conformably to the opinions I have declared. 

Appropriations proposed by the Secretary of the Treasury, $17,515,933 
Ditto, in addition to the above, in the bill for the 

civil and diplomatic service, - - 607,250 

Ditto in the navy bill, - 587,521 

Ditto in the bill for the Indian service, - - 1,165,332 

Ditto in the army bill, - 97,239 

Advance to the cities in the District of Columbia, amount 

payable the present year, - 70,883 

Appropriation for hostilities among the Seminoles, - 2,120,000 

Ditto for hostilities among the Creeks, - - 500,000 

Ditto for raising volunteers and dragoons, - 300,000 

Bill for the defence of the western frontier, - - 1,000,000 

House bill additional for fortifications, - 200,000 

Appropriations for other objects in same bill, - - 882,053 

House bill, additional for civil service, - 52,684 

Private claims, ------ 100,000 

Miscellaneous works of various kinds, light-houses, beacons, 

Cumberland road, public buildings, say, - - 2,000,000 

Add for other possible appropriations not enumerated, - 2,801,105 

Total, exclusive of new Indian treaties, - - - $30,000,000 

Of this sum, there will remain at the end of the year, unexpended, not 
less than twelve millions of dollars. It exceeded eight millions the 
last year. It will increase in proportion to the increase of appropriations. 

On the other hand, the execution of new treaties with the Indians, 
will call for an appropriation to the amount of $6,259,241, which, for 
reasons heretofore stated, I do not consider it necessary to charge to the 
income of the current year. 

Such is the result of my reflections on this important subject. I have 
treated it in good faith, actuated by a sincere wish to arrive at the truth, 
and especially to avoid all exaggeration as to the available surplus in the 
Treasury. The sum is large. It cannot be disguised or denied. No 
part of the surplus of 1835 can be reached by the expenditure of 1836. 
On the contrary, there is abundant reason to believe that, without speak- 



27 

ing of unexpended appropriations, which cannot fall short at the end of 
this year of twelve millions, there will be an additional sum of unap- 
propriated surplus of the revenue of 1836, to be added to the balance of 
credit from the last year. 

I demand of the members of this House what is to be done with this 
great treasure ? Shall it continue in the hands of the deposite banks, 
safe or unsafe, to be loaned by them for the benefit of individuals, yield- 
ing no advantage to the people of the United States ? 

We propose to you, on the one hand, the distribution-bill. We say 
that, in principle, it is a just, wise, and proper measure. If it contem- 
plates too large a distribution, diminish the sum. Leave in the Treasury 
all that is needed for the common defence and general welfare of the 
Union. Of that I would not touch a dollar. But the residue, place in 
the hands of the States ; restore it to the People themselves ; let it be 
applied to the objects of local improvement, which may or may not fall 
within the scope of the constitutional power of Congress, but which are 
all-important to the prosperity and the strength of the United States. 

If the distribution-bill comes in conflict with the graduation-bill, can- 
not the two objects be combined, thus reconciling and concilia'ting the 
rights of the old States, and the interest of the new ones ? 

If neither of these things may be done, if it does not comport with the 
political views of the majority of this House to make an absolute dona- 
tion of the surplus treasure to the several States, — if there be a constitu- 
ent ingredient of this legislature, not a member of the House, not a 
member of the Senate, whose possible action upon this subject gentle- 
men can suffer themselves to anticipate, so as to be affected thereby, — 
then I ask the House whether this surplus treasure may not be placed 
in the respective State treasuries in the form of a deposite or loan ? Such 
a measure would be infinitely less exceptionable than to have the Gov- 
ernment of the United States come into the market as a great specu- 
lator in stocks, less than to retain the public treasure in the deposite 
banks at a clear loss of two or three millions of interest, perhaps in part 
of the principal ; less than to squander it in mere idle wastefulness. 

I believe in my conscience that a distribution of the surplus revenue 
ought to be made. The country demands it. The public interest de- 
mands it. I do not urge any plan for the disposition of the public money 
in the spirit of party agitation. Nay, if I sought a topic of party agita- 
tion out of this House, a means of rousing the just indignation of the 
People, I should wish for nothing better than to have Congress adjourn, 
by the will of the majority, leaving the public treasure dispensed among 
favored persons or corporations, to be used or abused at the discretion 
of the Administration. Will the majority of the House give to the Oppo- 
sition such a manifest advantage ? Will they not rather consult their 
interest and their public duty, by consenting to the passage of some law T , 
either of grant or of deposite, which may place a portion of the surplus 
revenue in the control or custody of the respective States ? I exhort 
them by every consideration of interest, I adjure them by every consid- 
eration of duty, not to suffer this session of Congress to terminate, leav- 
ing the public treasure unguarded, neglected, abandoned. Let us be- 
ware of this great wrong to the People and the States w T e represent. 

With these remarks, it would have given me satisfaction to be able to 



28 

close what I might wish to say on the subject oi' these resolutions. But 
there is one other topic, which shows itself in the speeches of prominent 
friends of the land-bill, and which I cannot pass unnoticed. I mean, the 
suggestion, that the North enjoys more than a due share of the advantages 
of the Union. It was very distinctly averred by the gentleman from Ken- 
tucky, who preceded me, (Mr. Graves,) as an argument in favor of the 
distribution-bill, that the State of New York had received more of the 
public revenue than I know not how many of the States of the South and 
West, which he enumerated ; that the North and North-East were made 
rich by the public expenditures ; in contrast with which, was arrayed the 
liberality of the State of Kentucky towards the manufactures and com- 
merce of the Atlantic States. The gentleman frankly admitted, that he 
had not made any exact calculations on the subject. It would have been 
well, I think, had he looked into the figures carefully ; because, had he 
done so, he would have ascertained that there is no foundation in fact, 
for such grave charges in denial of the general and impartial value of the 
union of these States. 

I take leave to say, we have heard something too much of the same 
tenor from the State of Kentucky, throughout the present session of 
Congress ; and, if it were in order, I should say, in both its chambers. 
To me, a new member of the House, little versed, of course, in the de- 
tails of its debates, few things have seemed stranger than the idea, so 
pertinaciously insisted on, that appropriations are to be made, not where 
the public service requires them, but in shares to the several States. At 
an early period of the session, after having heard such things more than 
'once, a strong sense of their injustice drew from me a few observations, 
somewhat warmer, it may be, than gentlemen were accustomed to hear 
from the North. If I could suppose that, under the impulses of the mo- 
ment, I overstepped the limits of manly controversy, I should be sorry for it. 
Certain I am, on ample reflection, and after deliberate investigation of 
the details of the question, that I did not go one hair's breadth beyond 
the truth, in the terms of condemnation, which I applied to these re- 
proaches on the States of the Atlantic, and especially the East, I spoke, 
to be sure; strongly, as I felt. Doubtless, members from other States are 
attached to their homes. So am I to mine. I can conceive that gentlemen 
should feel indignant, if they thought their State unjustly assailed : cannot 
they conceive that I should, also, if my State be unjustly assailed ? Or 
is it imagined, that members from the East are to kiss the rod that is 
raised to strike ? Do so, they who list. I desire friendship with every 
member of this House. But I have rights to maintain here, my own 
and those of my constituents ; and I shall not shrink from any issue, 
which their vindication may involve. 

Deeming this question of the last importance, in its general bearing 
on the stability and tranquil action of the Government of the Union, I 
have taken some pains to probe the matter to the bottom. If the result 
of my inquiries were other than what it is, it would not be stated to the 
House. Some time since, a gentleman from South Carolina, (Mr. 
Thompson,) presented a variety of calculations, tending to show that, 
the North was favored to the injury of the South. That gentleman was 
answered, and he will permit me to say, with all due respect, triumph- 
antly answered, by the gentleman from Maine, (Mr. Evans,) the gen- 



29 

tleman from Virginia, (Mr. Garland,) and another gentleman from Maine, 
(Mr. Jarvis.) My view of the subject covers the whole United States. 
I shall demonstrate, by a detailed examination of the public expenditures 
in its various branches, and upon authentic documents, that there exists 
a striking equality in its distribution. How could it be otherwise? 
Witness the zeal and vigilance of members for the cause of their par- 
ticular constituents. Bear in recollection the interest and the will of 
every Administration to keep well, so far as it may, with all sections of 
the country. At any rate the fact exists. I shall show it, in terms cour- 
teous, but positive, as befits the consciousness of truth ; and, sec- 
tional matter as it all is, I cannot but hope the effect will be to strengthen, 
rather than weaken, our common attachment to the Union. 

All things done by man must have a locality. Whenever the gov- 
ernment of a country disburses money, it must be disbursed somewhere. 
Certain expenditures are, upon the face of them, absolutely and unequivo- 
cally national ; as the charges of foreign intercourse, drawn and spent 
abroad. Others are apparently sectional; as the expenses of a land-of- 
fice in the West, or a light-house in the East. Now, it is natural that a 
measure local in name should be brought forward by local interests. It 
must be so, in the operation of local necessities, feelings, and knowledge. 
I cannot admit that because the members from a particular State, or tier of 
States, support a measure unanimously, the fact affords ground of pre- 
sumption against a measure. Who should understand and advocate a thing, 
if not the members from the State most immediately concerned with it ? As 
a member of this House, I lie under particular obligation to see to the 
welfare of my State. That is one thing for which we are severally sent 
here. Shall not the Representatives from the State of Ohio feel and act 
unitedly in the defence of their northern frontier? Shall not the Repre- 
sentatives from Alabama, Georgia, and Florida take a deep interest in the 
measures necessary for the protection of their constituents against the hos- 
tilities of the Creeks and Seminoles? Surely. They support locally: 
we must not reject locally. Our decision should be national in its mo- 
tives and scope, not sectional. 

This whole doctrine of allotting out the public expenditures in shares 
is rotten to the core. Try it practically: strip it of all disguise and 
apply it to any familiar fact. Suppose a bill before this House, pro- 
posing to appropriate money for the defence of the southern fron- 
tier; and suppose members from the North to rise, under such cir- 
cumstances, with the avowal on their lips : — We cannot gainsay the 
propriety of this appropriation; there is flagrant war before our eyes, 
for the prosecution of which this money is indispensably necessary; 
but we will not grant it, unless you give us a corresponding sum of 
money to aid in the construction of such a canal or such a rail-way, 
in our particular neighborhood. What would be said of this? What 
ought to be said? There is no language of censure, in the infinite com- 
binations of human speech, which would be considered blasting enough 
for such a proposition. Yet the case put is but an obvious illustration of 
the doctrine, presented in the nakedness of its odious deformity. And 
I desir? to tender to the gentleman from Ohio, (Mr. Hamer,) my grateful 
estimation of the patriotic nationality of sentiment, which he has mani- 
fested, in occasional reference heretofore to this topic of debate. 



30 

We legislate for a vast country, with its long ocean frontier, and its 
immense interior expansion. In that stupendous valley of the Missis- 
sippi and its tributary waters, the far- western city of St. Louis is, it may 
be, the geographical centre of the territory of the United States. Our 
country is destined, possibly, to become co-extensive with the Continent. 
I do not speak of this as what I wish ; but as what, in the expansive 
progress of our institutions, it may be impossible to avert. Nature has 
impressed geographical differences on this wide-spread surface of the 
United States. Part of it lies on the x\tlantic Ocean ; part on the Gulf 
of Mexico ; part on the inland seas of the North ; and part on the thou- 
sand offsprings of the great Father of Waters. Our country embraces 
every diversity of climate, of soil, of location, of productions, which the 
terraqueous globe affords. Our occupations differ, as our lines are cast 
here or there within it. The manufacturing and commercial industry of 
the East, the agriculture and mines of the North and Centre, the plant- 
ing of the South and the West, all contribute to swell the sum of our 
greatness. We differ in the quality of the labor we respectively employ. 
So many multitudinous causes go to complicate the interests with which 
Congress has to deal. Our legislation is to be founded on all these 
facts, combined, compared, compromised, with reference to the parmount 
value of the Union. 

Times have occurred, in which one or another of the States thought 
the power of the Confederacy pressed heavily on her interests or her 
principles. It has happened to Pennsylvania, to Virginia, to Massachu- 
setts, to South Carolina. Times have occurred, in which some of the 
States have thought they had not their due proportion of the benefits of 
the Confederacy. I freely admit that in two of the States of the West, 
especially, there has been comparatively little of the public money ex- 
pended in improvements or public works of any kind, comparatively 
little advantage received under the land system of the United States. I 
mean, Kentucky and Tennessee. It is equally true of one of the States 
of the East, to wit, Vermont. So far as regards Kentucky and Tennes- 
see, the fact is owing partly to their being intermediate, historically 
speaking, between the old and new States ; partly to their felicitous 
geographical position, and other natural advantages; and not least to 
the fact that neither of them is a frontier State. It is not, I am sure, 
ascribable to any sectionality of feeling or action on the part of the East 
towards the West. No such feeling ever did exist ; no such action ever 
did occur. We of the Atlantic States may safely challenge a scrutiny of 
the political and legislative records of the country, upon such a contro- 
versy. It will distinctly appear, in the sequel of my remarks, that it is 
not the West as a section, in any grouping or aggregation of which the 
States are susceptible, but simply the two States of Kentucky and Ten- 
nessee, which have thus failed to partake in the direct local expenditures 
of the Union. And the error, committed by the gentleman from Ken- 
tucky, consists in putting the question sectionally ; when there is no 
tincture of sectionalism, as between East and West, in the facts of the 
case. 

New York, it is alleged, has received more of the public moneys than 
all the States of the South or South-West ! When this remark struck my 
ear, it raised before my mind's eye the image of that great State, its 



31 

boundless enterprise, its magnificent canal which unites the waters of 
the Lakes and those of the Ocean, its numerous lesser canals, its railroads^ 
its liberally endowed system of public education. I began to doubt all 
the familiar facts of contemporaneous history. Did the United States 
subscribe any of its millions towards the construction of the Erie Canal? 
Did the United States contribute lands, enough for the seat of an empire, 
to the public schools of the State of New York ? Some such things, it 
seemed to me, I had heard of as falling to the lot of other regions of coun- 
try ; but I had read or imagined that New York was the child, as the 
Spaniard has it, of her own works ; that by her own hands and with 
her own materials she had built up the structure of her unrivalled pros- 
perity ; that she had herself set the example, unaided and alone, of the 
prosecution of public works of interior communication, on that vast scale, 
which her success came to render so common throughout the United 
States. 

But it is no question of single States. There is an obvious fallacy in so 
treating it. To do justice to it, we should take into view sections of 
country, disregarding political lines, and looking only to geographical re- 
lations, or to distinct regions inhabited respectively by a population of 
congenial interests, occupations, and productions. 

I throw together, in one group, the States of the North and East, 
Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Con- 
necticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, ten ; the 
States or Territories of the West, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, 
Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas, Michigan, Wisconsin, nine ; those of the 
South, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Al- 
abama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, nine ; and I proceed to show in 
what sums and proportions the public money has gone to each of these 
great sections of the Union. 

By a calculation, which I have before me, covering the period from 
1789 to 1S29, inclusive, it appears that there can be traced into the dif- 
ferent States and Territories, excluding the District of Columbia, the sum of 
$119,455,187. Of this sum, $43,567,522, more than one-third, went into 
Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, 
Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida, one-third in number, greatly less than 
one-third in population, of all the United States. The plain fact needs 
no comment. 

This calculation does not include the diplomatic charges of the Gov- 
ernment, nor such portion of the charges belonging to war as evidently 
have no locality of expenditure. Nor does it include expenditures on 
account of the public debt ; for the repayment of money to the public 
creditor, wherever he may dwell, is not an act of local partiality. Nor 
does it include pensions, which are the recompense of personal services 
and sacrifices, the debts of honor superinduced by war. If pensions were 
to be treated as local expenditures, it would give occasion to inquire how 
it happens that so large a proportion of the persons entitled to pensions 
reside in particular regions of the country ; a course of inquiry which a 
northern man need feel no unwillingness to pursue. 

For the rest, the calculation is conclusive as to the whole question, so far 
as it is a question between North and South ; unless, indeed, we adopt the 
idea of the gentleman from South Carolina, ( Mr. Thompson, ) who, to arrive 



32 

at a different result, reckons Maryland and Virginia among the States of the 
North. Such a position is evidently untenable. The doctrine would 
act fatally against itself, by the undue weight of relative population which 
it would cast upon the seetion of the North. It is contrary to the plain 
sense of the thing, also ; since Maryland and Virginia belong to the 
South by the character of their labor and of their productions. They 
are essential parts of the ^lave-holding and planting interests. If, indeed, 
it could be admitted as a just and serious view of the subject, I should 
heartily welcome the Old Dominion among the States of the North. I 
am sure Virginia and New England have in the past time breasted shoul- 
der to shoulder shock after shock, and should feel themselves cemented 
together by the blood of their fathers commingled in many a well-fought 
and hard-won battle-field, and by their common attachment to the Union. 
If there is to be a geographical line run through the Constitution, I re- 
joice that, after all, it is not Mason and Dixon's. 

It would be wearisome to run over all the details of public expendi- 
ture, in reference to the question under debate. Instead of this, I shall 
select, for detailed analysis, several classes of expenditure, which are 
those chiefly discussed, and which abundantly illustrate the whole subject. 

I begin with the fortifications of the maritime frontier. 

All the money hitherto expended on these fortifications has been dis- 
tributed as follows : (Sen. Doc. 24th Cong., No. 203.) 



Northern States on the 
Atlantic. 


Southern States on the 
Atlantic. 


On 


the Gulf. 


Maine - - 
New Hampshire - 
Massachusetts - 157,309 
Rhode Island - 962,369 
Connecticut - 
New York - 1,022,132 
Delaware - 107,136 


Maryland - 454,103 
Virginia - 3,127,837 
North Carolina- 760,869 
South Carolina - 324,426 
Georgia - 286,184 


Louisiana 
Alabama 
Florida - 


- 1,444,529 

- 1,026,777 

- 704,422 


$2,248,946 


§4,953,419 


$3,175,728 



Upon this table, it is to be remarked, first, that the entire system, of 
which these fortifications form a part, was arrranged in 1821, by a Com- 
mission composed of General Bernard, Captain Jesse D. Elliott of South 
Carolina, and Colonel Totten. It was arranged under the auspices of a 
Secretary of War from the same State, John C. Calhoun; and adopted 
by President Monroe. It is not the fruit, therefore, of northern councils 
or partialities. Secondly, in that plan, the works to be constructed 
were divided into three classes. The works for the protection of Bur- 
well's Bay and of Boston Roads were placed among the first in order of 
execution, chiefly because Norfolk and Boston were designated to be the 
great naval arsenals ofihe country; the one for the South, the other for 
the North. Certain works in South Carolina were placed in the second 
and third classes. Yet by some under-current of causes, fortifications 
at Charleston are in an active and efficient state, while those of the 
Chesapeake are still incomplete, and those of Massachusetts Bay almost 



33 



leglected. A single ship of war might sail up and cannonade Boston or 
New York with perfect impunity. Finally, it should be borne in mind, 
hat the fortifications on the Gulf are essentially defences for the business 
ind population of the West. 

What fortifications have been completed ? In the whole North, with 
ts exposed coast, its numerous and wealthy cities, to tempt an inva- 
ling foe, only two, Fort Hamilton, and Fort Lafayette, at New York. 
n the South, four, Fort Washington, in Maryland ; Fort Macon, in 
STorth Carolina ; Castle Pinckney, in South Carolina ; and Fort Morgan 
n Alabama. In the West, five, Fort Pike, Fort Wood, Fort Jackson, 
Battery Bienvenu, and Tower Bayou Dupre, all in Louisiana. 

We have two armories, one at Springfield, in Massachusetts, for the 
North, the other at Harper's Ferry, for the South. In the public ex- 
>enditures at each, there has been a very near approach to equality, it 
laving been, at the former, from 1816 to 1834 inclusive, $3,411,765; at 
he latter, $3,230,884. (Ex. Doc, 24th Cong., No. 44, p. 365.) An ar- 
mory is, doubtless, required at the West. The establishment of it has 
>een under consideration for eighteen years. Why has it not been con- 
structed? A western man, at the head of the Committee of Military 
Affairs, (Mr. R. M. Johnson,) himself tells us, it is because of the ina- 
>ility of Congress c £o reconcile contending interests as to its location.' 
House Repts., 24th Cong. ( , No. 373.) 'Contending interests' in what 
quarter? Of the East against the West? No! in the heart of the West 
tself : an edifying example of the mischievous effects of this narrow lo- 
:alism of spirit. I trust that, so far as regards this armory, the evil will 
lot outlive the present Congress. 

There is a like regard to the wants of the various parts of the country 
*i the distribution of arsenals and of depots for arms, as appears by the 
bllowing table: (Ex. Doc, 24th Cong., No. 44, p. 347.) 



North. 


South. 


West. 


Augusta, Me. 
Vatertown, Mass. 
fergennes, Vt. 
yVatervliet, N. Y. 
lome, N. Y. 
STew York, N. Y. 
Frankford, Pa. 


Washington, D. C 
Pikesviile, Md. 
Richmond, Va. 
Fort Monroe, Va. 
Augusta, Geo. 
Mt. Vernon, Ala. 
Appalachicola, Flo. 
Charleston, S. C. 
Fayette ville, N. C. 


Detroit, Mich. 

Pittsburg, Pa. 

Newport, Ken. 

St. Louis, Mo. 

Bellefontaine, Mo. 

Baton Rouge, La. 

Two new ones, not located. 



Phat is, seven in the section of the North and East, including Lakes 
Champlain and Ontario, and seventeen in the two sections of the South 
and the waters of the West. 

Leaving the article of military works, I proceed to another local ex- 
penditure, that of light-houses. 

There has been expended on light-houses, in the period from the or- 
ganization of the Government to the end of the year 1833, the following 
sums: (Ex. Doc. 2d sess. 23d Cong., No. 89.) 

3 



34 



Maine and Massachusetts* 


- $961,292 


District of Columbia 


$3,000 


New Hampshire 


- 


82,376 


Maryland 


155,847 


Rhode Island 


- 


133,422 


Virginia 


361,338 


Connecticut 


- 


175,266 


North Carolina 


381,450 


Vermont 


- 


6,662 


South Carolina 


182,827 


New York 


- 


514,955 


Georgia 


275,513 


New Jersey 


- 


4,925 


Florida 


229,791 


Pennsylvania 


- 


33,400 


Alabama 


27,828 


Delaware 




324,861 


Louisiana 
Mississippi 


199,736 
18,852 




$2,237,159 


$1,836,182 



Be it remembered, in anticipation of any remark as to the excess of 
expenditures upon the northern division of the Union, that it is per- 
petually thronged, at all seasons of the year, with coasting and fishing 
vessels plying along shore ; that the registered seamen of the one and 
the other division are in the proportion of 5,442 to 1,010; (Ex. Doc, 
24th Cong., No. 163;) and that of the entire tonnage of the country, 
about thirteen-fifteenths belong to the ten first-named States. (Ex. Doc. 
2d sess. 23d Cong., No. 187, p. 298.) 

Now to the vexed question of internal improvements. This expres- 
sion is a very vague one, as we all know. In the action of Congress, it 
is applied to the improvement of the means of moving from place to place, 
whether in bays and ports of the sea, or rivers, or across the land by 
canals and roads. To what extent the constitutional power of Congress 
in this matter reaches, and especially what interior communications are 
to be deemed national and what not, is among the unsettled points in the 
construction of the Constitution. The following table will show the 
amount expended within the several States on this class of public works^ 
from 1789 to 1833 inclusive : (Ex. Doc. 2d ses. 23d Cong., No. 89.) 



States of the North. 


States of the South. 


States of the West. 


Population 


5,619,129. 


Population 3,838,697. 


Population 


3,205,597. 


Maine, 


- 155,354 


Maryland, - 


Ohio, 


- 859,124 


Massachusetts, 


- 355,739 


Virginia, - 80 


Kentucky, 





New Hampshire, - 35,529 


North Carolina, - 197,573 


Indiana, 


- 270,465 


Rhode Island, 


230 


South Carolina, - 


Illinois, 


81,376 


Connecticut, 


- 47,498 


Georgia, - 17,914 


Michigan, 


- 206,104 


Vermont, 





Florida, - 188,372 


Missouri, 


44,467 


New York, 


- 446,271 


Alabama, - 169,978 


Tennessee, 


27,200 


New Jersey, 


100 




Mississippi, 


65,771 


Pennsylvania, 


- 54,841 


$573,917 


Arkansas, 


- 120,798 


Delaware, 


- 604,371 




Louisiana, 


46,553 






Dis. Swamp Can.,. 200,000 


Nav. Ohio and Miss. 394,513 




$1,699,933 


Chesapeake and 














Ohio Canal, 999,000 




$2,116,371 








Cumberland Road, 3,723,530 



* I place Maine and Massachusetts together, because the expenditures cover the period 
when they were one State. 



35 

Several additions to and comments upon these tables are necessary to 
the full understanding of the facts. 

Though Delaware lies almost wholly south of Mason and Dixon's line, 
I place it in the first column, because the money expended upon it has 
been quite as much for the benefit of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, as 
Delaware. I place Louisiana in the third column, because much of the 
expenditures of the West have been for the improvement of rivers, and 
in regard to this point, the interest of Louisiana cannot be separated from 
that of the great valley of the Mississippi. 

It would seem, at first impression, that the proportion of public money 
expended in this way south of Mason and Dixon's line, as compared with 
the money expended at the North, was in the proportion of one to three, 
or, measuring it by the ratio to the gross population on each side of the 
line, one to two ; that nothing had been expended in Maryland, next 
to nothing in Virginia. If it were so, it would be pertinent to refer to 
the constitutional opinions of the South in elucidation of the cir- 
cumstance. But it is not the fact. To the sum of 573,917 dollars di- 
rectly expended, we have to add, of subscriptions prior to 1834, the sum 
of 200,000 dollars to the Dismal Swamp Canal in Virginia, which stock 
is at a discount ; 999,000 dollars to the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal in 
Maryland, at a loss of more than half a million, without reckoning later 
sums appropriated to the same object ; and 450,000 to the Chesapeake 
and Delaware Canal, partly in Delaware, and partly in Maryland, which 
has no market value. If these things be taken into consideration, and 
especially if the calculation on both sides be brought down to the present 
time, the difference in favor of the North vanishes. 

But the most interesting. points of comparison as to this, are between 
the States of the East and the West. Manifestly, the sum expended in 
the ten States of the North and East, is much less than the sum ex- 
pended in the eight States and two Territories of the West. I have 
omitted to reckon the subscription of 233,500 dollars to the Louisville and 
Portland Canal, because of the value of the stock ; but, if the contemplated 
appropriation to render that canal public should pass both Houses, it 
will add a million of dollars to the sum total of the column of the West. 
And shall we say nothing of the Cumberland Road ? 

Down to the close of 1833, the cost of the Cumberland Road was 
3,723,530 dollars. To the same period, the total cost of internal im- 
provements, fortifications, and light-houses, all together, in all New 
England, was but 3,506,751 dollars. Am I told that the Cumberland 
Road unites the Atlantic and the West ? So do the admirable public 
works constructed at her own expense by the State of Pennsylvania. So 
do the series of canals and railways, constructed or undertaken at the 
sole expense of the States of New York and Massachusetts, from the 
Lakes to Albany, and thence diverging to the cities of New York and of 
Boston. That it adds to the value of the public lands ? So do these. 
That it is beneficial to the whole country ? So are these. That it is a 
national work. Be it so, if you will. And are not the fortifications and 
other public works on the maritime frontier, by tenfold greater force 
of reasoning, national in ever}*- element that goes to constitute nationality ? 

To enter into every one of the details of this extensive subject would 
he irksome to mvself and to the House, I abstain from doing it. Th x e 
*4 



36 

more you investigate the question, the more conclusively will you make 
it appear, that all these complaints are fallacious in principle and un- 
founded in fact. It is the inside of a house, the seat of ease and com- 
fort, finding fault that money is expended on the exposed outside, for the 
common benefit of the whole edifice and all its inmates. It is impossible, 
without some pretty radical change in the nature of things, to have a 
country which is all interior and no part frontier. That frontier has the 
advantage, if advantage it be, of the money employed in frontier expenses. 
And it bears the first brunt of battle. Would it not be immeasurably 
ridiculous for me to complain that the inhabitants of Massachusetts, 
peaceably pursuing their accustomed avocations, do not enjoy the privi- 
lege of seeing some millions of public money spent among them, in the 
very pleasant way it now circulates in Florida ? In a word, the expen- 
ditures of the frontier of the United States, whether applied on the 
Ocean, the Gulf, or the interior, are nevertheless expenditures for and of 
the heart of the country, which they cover and protect. 

Men of high public estimation have soberly affirmed in Congress, that 
so many millions, drawn from the West, are expended on other parts of 
the Union. Self-delusion can hardly go beyond this point. — I have shown 
how and where the public money is disbursed. A word as to how and 
where it is obtained. 

Our revenue from customs is a voluntary tax paid by the consumer of 
dutiable merchandise. In proportion to the general diffusion of wealth 
and competency, and to the habits of expense, characteristic of any part 
of the country, will be its contribution to this branch of the public taxes. 
It is obvious to perceive, that the section of the North and East con- 
sumes far more of commodities subject to duty than either that of the 
South or that of the West. 

Our revenue from the public lands has the appearance of coming from 
the West It is notorious, however, that far the larger part of the pur- 
chase-money is provided by emigrants or capitalists of the Atlantic States. 
We are every day pouring out our population and our riches into the 
capacious lap of the West. 

There is one other topic, which it would be unjust, in view of both 
sides of the question, to pass over. I have submitted authentic details 
in regard to most of the fixed public works. Our marine hospitals on 
the seaboard are paid for by our seamen out of their own hard earnings, 
and have nothing to do with the subject. Some appropriations have been 
made latterly for the construction of custom-houses. The commerce of the 
country demands it. I can find many an off-set for the cost of them, by 
looking into the disposition of the public lands. But our navy yards, and 
the current expenses of the naval service, which are of course on the 
seaboard, demand consideration. I suppose it must be through these 
current expenditures of the naval service, that the gentleman from Ken- 
tucky (Mr. Graves) imagines that the section of the North and East is 
growing rich by the disbursements of the public money. 

It is true enough that our navy yards are on the coast, either of the 
Atlantic or the Gulf. I suppose they would be of very little use on a 
mountain of the interior, very little in the midst of a prairie. What 
slight inequality there is in the fact that four of our seven yards are 
situated at the North, and only three at the South, has been the natural 



37 

consequence of circumstances wholly independent of the action of the 
Government. Where is the mercantile marine built, owned, and man- 
ned ? Who finds the ships which convey to market the vast productions 
of the South and West ? It is the North, simply because the South has 
a local advantage in the character of its soil, which as it were extinguishes 
other branches of industry by its superior productiveness, as the sun does 
the light of the stars. Cotton-planting is so profitable, that ship-building 
and other manufactures, or even the production of the necessaries of 
life, are comparatively neglected by the people of the South. Besides, 
every thing connected with ship-building is done cheaper at the North. 
It is not government patronage which enables me to build a merchant-ship 
at the North, and employ her at the South. 

In the country, or section of country, where the mercantile marine 
flourishes, there will the military marine flourish. You may transfer it to 
other localities, for great considerations of public good ; you may create 
ports to receive it, where suitable ones were not provided by nature. 
Still, it is an exotic, sustained by cost and care ; not a hardy plant, 
springing up spontaneously in its native soil. 

Now as to the current expenditures for the service of the navy. All 
articles of merchandise tend towards some great market, within the 
sphere of which they are produced. Their price has reference to that 
market. T(* obtain them on advantageous terms, a purchaser will go, as 
a matter of course, either to the place of production or to the place of 
market. This law of trade regulates the actions of private individuals, 
looking only to their own business. It applies to the purchases made by 
the United States, with this additional circumstance, that the Government 
buys on advertised proposals of contract. It does not go to the seller. 
It makes known its wants, and invites offers. It is immaterial to the Gov- 
ernment, where the contractor lives, where he collects the supplies that 
he furnishes, or where the profits he makes are to be invested or spent. 
The Government looks only to the quality of the article and the price ; 
except that, as in duty bound, it seeks for things of the growth or manu- 
facture of the United ^States in preference to imported merchandise. It 
opens a free competition to every inhabitant of the country, whether he 
be of the North or the South, the East or the West. If the people of 
any State, — South Carolina, for instance, — do not put in for contracts, we 
are to presume it is because they do not produce the article wanted, or 
have other business that is more profitable. 

Ay, but the still-reproached East, the ever-patient East ! We, it 
seems, grow rich by the expenditure among us of the money of the 
United States. Absurd ! We prosper, as we did before this Govern- 
ment existed, and as we should if it were to cease to exist in this hour, 
by the energies that are within us ; by the properties of character, which 
our sect and our fathers displayed in the overthrow of the monarchy of 
England, which brought them hither to this New World, and which mar- 
shalled them forward into the van of the battles of the Revolution. 

I aver that the government expenditures in the States of the East are 
not sufficient to exert any sensible effect upon their general industry or 
prosperity. Take an example, to show the truth of the case in the 
clearest light. Suppose you are to expend half a million of dollars in 
the construction and equipment of a ship of the line. What por- 



38 

tion of the materials of that ship is furnished by the States of the East ? 
Timber ? No, that comes from Florida, and elsewhere at the South. Sails 
and cordage ? Cotton is from the South, and hemp from Russia, or from 
the State of Kentucky. Copper, iron, lead ? These are from Pennsyl- 
vania, from Wisconsin, or from foreign countries, exeept now and then a 
little iron smelted from bog-ore atthe North. Flour? We import corn and 
wheat in vast quantities for our own consumption ; we have none to sell 
to the Navy Department. Molasses, sugar, rice ? None of these are 
produced in Yankee land. Pork and beef? They come to us from the 
great pastures of the interior, from the banks of the Ohio, from the State 
of Kentucky itself. To scarce any thing of all the costly materials and 
equipments of that ship can New England lay claim, unless it be a few 
white-pine spars and locust treenails, which are among the most insignifi- 
cant of the items in the charges of her construction. Some things, 
however, our soil has contributed to the composition of the navy. We 
have given you the skill and science to shape and combine its inanimate 
materials, the productions of your forests, your fields, and your mines, 
and to form these into noble fabrics, which walk on the water at our 
command as things of life. We have given you the brave sailors, who man 
your gun-decks, and who, in the darkest hour of doubtful warfare, threw 
themselves into the strife, summoned back victory to your standard, and 
caused its star-spangled folds to fling themselves out in friumph once 
again to the breezes of their own blue heaven. — These are the things 
which the East contributes to the navy of the Union. 

In these remarks, I act wholly on the defensive. I deny the alleged 
fact of inequality in the distribution of the public expenditures ; I deny 
the alleged causes or motives of the supposed inequality. There are 
two sides to this question. If I chose to do it, I could easily turn the 
tables on gentlemen, and from defence proceed to attack. Hundreds of 
times I have heard it complainingly said at the North, — We pay for our 
lands, without any favors as to time, or reduction as to price, on the part 
of Government. No millions have been expended among us in the ex- 
tinguishment of Indian titles. We have no profitable pre-emption spec- 
ulations. No money by millions of dollars, no land by millions of acres, 
has been bestowed on us for aid in the construction of canals, roads, and 
railways. Our country is filled with common schools and the higher in- 
stitutions of instruction, with no thanks to the rest of the Union ; for not 
to us, as to the States of the West, has Congress given 9,030,469 acres 
of public land for the uses of education. 

I denounce all such murmurs against the West, when I hear them in 
the mouths of my constituents at home ; and I denounce all such mur- 
murs against the North, when I hear them in the mouths of the members 
of this House. To the North I say, — The five millions expended on the 
Cumberland Road, the two millions of acres of public land, and the two 
or three millions of dollars in money, appropriated to similai objects, 
have been carried by the. votes of your own Representatives in Con- 
gress ; that vast donation of lands to the new States of the West for the 
aid of education, like the perpetual prohibition of slavery in a part of the 
same region, was the large and enlightened idea of your own Nathan 
Dane ; and I honor and applaud the patriotic forecast, and the generous 
liberality, which looked to the good of the whole nation, instead of shut- 



39 

ting up the mind in the narrow limits of a single State. I am sorry that 
the same lawgiver did not possess a yet wider field for the operation of ' 
his ordinance. 

To the West in general, I say, — You are mistaken as to the facts, when 
you suppose there is partiality in the action of the Federal Congress to 
your prejudice. It is quite the other way, as mathematical demonstration 
will show. 

To Kentucky I say, — The inequalities of which you complain are State 
inequalities, not sectional ones. Thus, we have spent in New Hampshire 
for internal improvements 35,529 dollars, in Vermont nothing ; in North 
Carolina 197,573 dollars, in South Carolina nothing; in Kentucky 
nothing, and 859,124 dollars in Ohio. The simple juxtaposition of these 
examples of inequality proves that there is nothing sectional in the fact, 
unless you mean to hand over Ohio and Louisiana to the East, in the same 
deed, and by the same rule of transfer, which carry Virginia. 

To every member of this House, whatever spot of the Union he repre- 
sents, I say, — Away with these local complaints ; I am ashamed of them ; 
they are unworthy of an American Congress. — 1 have three sufficient 
answers for all such complaints. In the first place, it is immaterial to 
me where the money of an appropriation is to be expended. Is the ap- 
propriation constitutional ? Is it required by the public service ? These 
are the questions to be asked. In the second place, there is no just 
foundation for' the complaints. I concur to the letter in the sentiment 
of the gentleman from South Carolina, (Mr. Thompson,) that a union of 
States, such as ours, like the relations of private friendship, to be lasting, 
must be one of perfect equality. 1 say this equality exists, to all prac- 
tical purposes, on a fair and general view of the great sections of the 
Union. And if a State were to come here and say it could not be loyal 
without money, I would sooner spend money on it needlessly, lavishly, 
wastefully, ay, throw money away on it, than see it disaffected for 
want of expenditures within it, under the impression that it is unfairly 
treated by Congress or the sister States. Finally, whatever inequalities 
of this kind there might be, I say they would be counterbalanced a 
thousand-fold by the general benefits of the Union, — the exemption of 
the States from domestic wars, border differences, impediments of inter- 
course, — and their unity of force in foreign affairs. It is frequently said 
by gentlemen from the West, that the cost of Louisiana and Florida should 
not be charged to the receipts of the public lands, because of the politi- 
cal advantages of the acquisition to the whole Union. Be it so, but let 
the same rule be applied to other public expenditures. Remember that 
great objects cannot be attained, except by the compromise and sacrifice of 
minor objects. Call to mind the strikingly pertinent observations of a 
celebrated statesman in reference to this subject : c All government, in- 
deed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every pru- 
dent act, is founded on compromise and barter. We balance inconve- 
niences ; we give and take; we remit some rights, that we may enjoy 
others ; and we choose rather to be happy citizens than subtle dispu- 
tants. As we must give some natural liberty to enjoy civil advantages, 
so we must sacrifice some civil liberties, for the advantages to be derived 
from the communion and fellowship of a great empire.' This considera- 
tion lies at the very foundation of a Union, which, in its beautiful sys- 



40 

tern, realizes the dreams of St. Pierre and Rousseau, of a continent con- 
federated in the cause of civilization and peace. 

In conclusion of all the statistical details, with which I have troubled 
the House, I have these further facts to present. The electoral colleges 
of New England have supported southern men for the Chief Magistracy 
of this nation three times unanimously, once with but one negative, again 
by large majorities, — but from the organization of the Government to this 
day only nine votes have been thrown by all the States south of the 
Potomac for presidential candidates north of that river. Add to which, 
the corresponding fact of one or the other of two candidates for the 
Presidency, presented by the West, having been warmly supported by 
nearly the entire mass of the population of New England. I do not 
speak of this in reproach of the South or the West; but simply in vindica- 
tion of the justice and fairness of the North. 

Our country, with all its sectional diversity of views and feelings, is 
one. It is one in the rich, manly, vigorous, expressive language we 
speak, which is become the vernacular tongue as it were of parliament- 
ary eloquence, the very dialect of constitutional freedom. It is one in 
the fame of our fathers, and in the historical reminiscences which belong 
to us as a nation. It is one in the political principles of republicanism 
which we feel and profess in common, no matter in what spot of earth 
our portion be cast. It is one in the substantial basis of our manners, in 
the warp at least of which the web is woven. It is one. in the ties of 
friendship, affinity, and blood, binding us together, throughout the whole 
extent of the land, in the associations of trade, of emigration, and of mar- 
riage. It is one in the generalrbalance of interests and of business, aris- 
ing from our mutual w^ants and the reciprocal interchanges of the products 
of our industry. It is one in our exterior relations, protected as these 
are by the honored flag of the Union. It is one in that glorious Consti- 
tution, the best inheritance transmitted to us by our fathers, the monu- 
ment of their wisdom and their virtue, under whose shelter we live and 
flourish as a People. 

One we are in fact, one should we be in sentiment. To this great 
Republic, union is peace, union is grandeur, union is power, union is 
honor, union is every thing which a free-spirited and mighty nation 
should glory to possess. To us all, next to independence, next to liber- 
ty, next to honor, be we persuaded that a cordial and abiding confedera- 
cy of the American People is the greatest of earthly goods. We, the sev- 
eral States which compose it, entered into it with conciliation to the 
people of our sister States in our hearts, and compromise of all secondary 
interests in our acts. Thus let us persevere, with the same emotions, 
fresh and bright as in the first conception, and welling forth in exhaust- 
less abundance from our bosoms ; feeling that, like the fabled fountains of 
Florida, they are capable to communicate matchless beauty and everlast- 
ing youth to this our beloved Republic. 

That, unlike other political societies, this will endure unchangeable 
forever, I cannot hope ; but I pray to God, if in the decrees of his provi- 
dence he have any mercy in store for me, not to suffer me to behold 
the hour of its dissolution : its glory extinct ; the banner of its pride rent 
and trampled in the dust ; its nationality a moral of history ; its grandeur, 
a lustrous vision of the morning slumber, vanished ; its liberty, a disem- 



41 

bodied spirit, brooding, like the genius of the past, amid the prostrate 
monuments of its old magnificence. 

And there is, in the burning chambers of the dread hereafter, no infinite 
of wrath vast enough, for him, who, Eratostratus-like, to be remembered 
only for infamy, shall apply the torch of destruction to this fair Ephesian 
temple of our Union. That time, in some long, long future age, and that 
person, may come, for the overthrow of our country. Accursed be the 
traitor, whensoever and wheresoever shall be his advent among us, like 
the spirit of evil, issuing from his realms of darkness to trouble the pure 
bliss of Paradise. — To him that shall compass or plot the dissolution of 
this Union, I would apply language resembling what I remember to have 
seen of an old anathema : Wherever fire burns, or water runs ; wher- 
ever ship floats or land is tilled ; wherever the skies vault themselves, or 
the lark carols to the dawn, or sun shines, or earth greens in his ray ; 
wherever God is worshipped in temples or heard in thunder ; wherever 
man is honored or woman loved ; — there, from thenceforth and forever, 
shall there be to him no part or lot in the honor of man or the love of 
woman. — Ixion's revolving wheel, the overmantling cup at which Tanta- 
lus may not slake his unquenchable thirst, the insatiable vulture gnawing 
at the immortal heart of Prometheus, the rebel giants writhing in the 
volcanic fires of iEtna, are but faint types of his doom. 

I speak plainly and strongly, as I feel, and without mincing my 
words; because I believe it to be the duty of every man, and especially 
of us, who are among the appointed sentinels of the Constitution, to 
look well to these the issues of life and de^th to this nation. I do not, I 
cannot, I will not, believe that opinions, adverse hereto, exist any where 
within the bounds of the Republic ; and I would forestall their possible 
future up-springing. I would have our allegiance to the Union unshaken 
and unshakeable ; our constancy in the public cause, fixed as the north 
star in the firmament ; our dedication to its interests, a vestal-fire burning 
on with unextinguishable flame forever. Here, in the eyes of our 
countrymen, and of the world, with the muse of history before us to 
record our deeds and our words, let us, like Hannibal at the altar of his 
gods, swear eternal faithfulness to our country, eternal hatred to its foes. 
Show we that we are wedded to the Union for weal and for wo, as the 
fondest lover would hug to his heart the bride bound to him in the first 
bright ardor of young possession. We have not purposed to embark in 
this venture only to sail over the«smooth surface of a Summer sea, with 
hope and pleasure to waft us joyously along ; but with resolved spirits, 
ready to meet, like true men, whatever of» danger and' vicissitude may 
descend upon our voyage, and to stand *iflf> ^gallantly for the treasure of 
honor and faith intrusted to our charge. Rally we, then, to the stripes 
and stars, as the symbol of glory to us, and the harbinger of liberty to 
all the nations of the world. So long as a shred of that sacred 
standard remains to us, let us cling to it, with such undying devotion, as 
the Christian pilgrims of the middle age cherished the least fragment of 
the cross ; and let us fly to its rescue, when periled, whether by foreign 
or domestic assault, as they did to snatch the holy sepulchre from the 
desecration of the Infidel. 



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